The gargoyle itself skewered him with a stony stare and the spiral staircase remained obstinately static. Harry climbed the stairs reluctantly. Before he had a chance to knock, the polished oak door yawned open.

“Come right in, Harry,” called Professor Dumbledore. “Make yourself comfortable. Do sit down if you can find a space.”

The old wizard was teaching a recently fledged Fawkes how to hold onto his perch with one foot while holding a purple grape in the talons of the other.

“He retains so much complicated information from one incarnation to the next, but sometimes the straightforward things, such as how to eat a grape while maintaining his balance, simply elude him. Fascinating evolutionary anomaly.” The Professor turned to Harry with a convivial smile.

“Some light refreshment, my boy? A Hairy Humbug perhaps?”

Harry declined as politely as he could. He wanted to get this interview over quickly and be on his own. During the last three days since he had been discharged from the hospital wing, Harry had adopted an isolationist policy. At his request, Dumbledore had, temporarily, excused him from lessons and authorised his use of the Room of Requirement as a bedroom. Dobby brought him his meals there and he ate in self-imposed solitude.

He had spent the days either pacing aimlessly in the grounds, oblivious to the weather, hardly aware of the direction in which he was walking; or else up in the deserted Astronomy Tower, sitting hunched on the ledge staring out into an eternity of self-loathing; or else in the Owlery with Hedwig, where she nibbled his ear and tolerated the occasional tears that dripped onto her snowy feathers.

He was avoiding his friends. How could he face Draco’s sneering contempt, or Ron with his baffled matey-ness, or, worst of all, Hermione’s reproachful sympathy? The one person he might have talked to - Sirius - was dead.

How could he face anyone, when he no longer knew who he was? Over the past three months, ever since he had received James’ letter, his identity had been systematically shredded. Not just his sense of self-esteem, but his entire belief system, his values, his confidence in his own judgement had all been undermined to the point of collapse. When he tried to reassemble the pieces, he found he no longer had any idea what shape his world should take.

In exacting his revenge, he had believed himself to be acting correctly and honourably, and it had all turned out to be a sham; he had been deceived and manipulated. He, in turn, in his self-righteous quest for justice, had cheated and lied to his friends, ending up a mere wand’s wave from committing a cold-blooded murder. Now he didn’t trust himself to tell the difference between right and wrong - and if he didn’t trust himself, how could he ever trust anybody else?

He floated in deep space, orbiting in solitary limbo, leaving the shattered blue planet below to piece itself together without him. And now Dumbledore was dragging him back to earth to confront his behaviour and its consequences. Why couldn’t he leave him alone? Or, if Dumbledore was going to discipline him, why couldn’t he drop the geniality and just get on with dishing out the punishment? As yet, Harry had received no reprimand at all for his actions, beyond the headmaster’s muted expressions of disappointment and Madam Pomfrey’s starchy tuts of annoyance. Perhaps Dumbledore considered that being Snape’s son was, in itself, punishment enough.

Harry looked listlessly round the Professor’s office. He was self-consciously aware that over the past few days he had been the subject of gossip and conjecture. He had the uncomfortable impression that, prior to his arrival, the portraits, which were now all unconvincingly engrossed in some business of their own, had been discussing him too.

Even Dumbledore could hardly disguise his curiosity as he enquired,

“Well then Harry, have you finally spoken to your father?”

An image of James automatically presented itself to Harry’s mind, and he had consciously to substitute that of Professor Snape. The portrait of Dilys Derwent shook her head, the limp, silver ringlets swaying, and she wagged her finger reprovingly. Phineas Nigellus, however, tapped the side of his nose and gave him an encouraging wink.

“Yes, Professor,” he replied.

“And have you reached any kind of, er, understanding?”

“No, Sir,” Harry admitted. He cringed at the memory of that first painful interview. Far from ascending the heights of reconciliation or achieving some kind of psychological entente, both he and Professor Snape had been stranded at base-camp. His blundering apology had taken him a few steps forward, but Snape had not exactly come to greet him with open arms. ‘It’s a start,’ Snape had conceded, but he had not been looking happy. Snape had agreed to the meeting - what irrefutable arguments had Dumbledore used to effect that, Harry wondered - but Harry had found him just as daunting and unapproachable as ever, his distrust falling fractionally this side of outright hostility.

Harry had resolved that the next time he saw Snape he would ask him - ask him for answers to the questions that nagged like an infected abscess, growing more pressingly urgent with each passing day. But it had been too soon. In the actual presence of the Potions Master, the enormity of his own guilt had lanced Harry’s tongue. It just hadn’t seemed the right time to mention James and Lily. The pencilled sins of the past were fading, erased by the altogether brasher present that demanded his attention.

Nor had Harry been able to find the words to articulate an apology that had even the remotest ring of sincerity. Normal, everyday words like ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. How are you feeling, Sir? Are you still in pain? I wish it had all never happened.’ He simply couldn’t say them. He could not voice his regret. He knew, he could see, that Snape’s injuries were not fully healed, and, knowing that he was responsible, he found that part of him did care - he couldn’t pretend to himself any longer that he was wholly unmoved - but he couldn’t bring himself to show it. To show sympathy was to invite rejection: Snape might snub his concern just as he refused Madam Pomfrey’s healing potions.

* * * * *

Snape had not made things easy at all.

Tongue-tied and clumsy, Harry had eventually tried another tack.

“I mean… I didn’t mean to… It wasn’t me, Sir, it was the Obligatus…”

That was a cop-out. Harry knew it and so did Snape. The Professor’s gaze frosted. Harry swallowed miserably, waiting to be verbally sliced, simmered and reduced to scum like just one more potion ingredient.

“That excuse is unworthy of you, Potter,” Snape said coldly, after a pause. He was making an effort to control his temper. “Professor Dumbledore has acquainted me with that Curse and its stipulations. As I understand it, no actual method of retaliation was specified in James Potter’s letter. Am I correct?”

Harry didn’t answer. Let slicing commence.

“Am I correct?” Snape repeated, articulating the words with iced clarity.

“Yes, Sir.”

Snape’s logic was like tendrils of Devil’s Snare wrapping themselves around his throat and dragging him down into a bog of digestive acid. Harry knew not to struggle. It would only make things worse.

“So, Potter, - and do correct me if I am wrong - the inspiration for your lurid scheme for my demise was yours, and yours alone. Is that not so?”

“Yes, Sir.” Harry was being eaten alive now, consumed by his own bile of guilt and regret.

“You told me once that you had been able to resist the Imperius?” Snape continued his cross-examination.

“Yes, Sir, but… …but that was in a lesson. I was expecting it, so I had a chance to prepare myself.” Harry rallied on the witness stand. “I wasn’t expecting a letter from my fa… from him to be cursed.”

“Very well. I will concede that point.” Snape’s voice had dropped to a low, husky whisper. He pinched the bridge of his nose, channelling his depleted energies, warding off the gathering tension. “And you, Potter, you decided that it would be fitting, appropriate - amusing - to betray me to the Dark Lord?”

Harry had no answer. This first step towards rapprochement wasn’t progressing half as well as he had hoped. True, Snape hadn’t hexed him on the spot, but he clearly would have liked to.

“Well, Potter? Was it worth it? Were you amused?” Snape’s whisper cracked into a seizure of painful coughing, the lingering legacy of the pneumonia. Harry stood at a loss, petrified in his own reticence.

“Get out!” Snape spluttered, gesturing Harry away with an angry wave. “Leave me alone!”

No, it had not been an auspicious meeting.

* * * * * *

Harry felt that Dumbledore expected some kind of explanation. But how could he describe that utterly abortive clash in anything but the most negative terms, which made him appear even more of a vindictive loser?

“We talked about the Obligatus, Sir. But Professor Snape wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t stay long.”

Dumbledore’s piercing blue eyes focussed acutely on the subtext and Harry realised that the old wizard understood everything whether Harry told him or not. He might as well come straight out and say that he thought it was futile to expect to repair the damage between Snape and himself. Forgiveness has its limits. They would have to agree to differ - a lot.

“Harry, my boy… ..this situation between you and Severus grieves me more deeply than you can possibly know.” Dumbledore said in a benign, sorrowful tone that Harry found, frankly, cloying. The wizard gave the baby phoenix one last grape and brushed away a few stray millet seeds that had lodged in the folds of his cloak. He seemed to be waiting for a response.

Harry fidgeted, entertaining a faint hope that he might be going to get off with a verbal warning. ‘Sticks and stones…’ he thought. ‘Yeah, I can hack being slated by Dumbledore. Just cut to the chase though…’

“Mr Potter!” Harry quailed. It was rare for Dumbledore to address him so formally. The vague, cardigan mildness, derisible and blandly deceptive, had been sloughed. The headmaster turned to him, stern, unsmiling and formidable.

“I have been waiting, Harry, for some slight indication that you feel a shred of remorse for your actions. But none, it seems, is forthcoming. I have, I think you will agree, accorded you considerable latitude over the last few days. I have acquiesced to your request for privacy, in the vain belief that in solitude you might contemplate the error of your ways.

“You could have come to see me at any time. My office is always open to my students as you well know. But no, you have spent your days wrapped in self-absorption, cocooned in self-pity. It has been necessary for me to instruct you to visit Professor Snape and, moreover, summon you here afterwards to see me.

“Your demeanour, Harry, does not suggest regret. In fact, you seem more worried about making excuses and minimising your responsibility. That simply will not do - you cannot pretend that all this never happened and that you are not accountable.”

It was true. Harry had felt that by turning his back on the world, somehow things would sort themselves out. Perhaps he was starting to take the happy endings for granted…

“You arrive in my office and your attitude can only be described as unrepentant and blasé. I see no evidence of contrition. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Harry hung his head, abashed by the uncompromising reprimand, indignant at the unfairness of this ‘grown-up’ interpretation of his reaction, and trying to formulate a defence against the sheer injustice of Dumbledore’s criticism. Had they all conveniently forgotten about the Curse of Compulsion?

Dumbledore continued seriously,

“What I see, Harry, is a young wizard who has yielded to the lure of Dark Magic and got himself into a situation beyond the compass of his powers. A situation which will have far-reaching ramifications. I do not condemn you, Harry, for falling prey to the Obligatus… …but the fervour of your response does cause me grave concern. You could have challenged Professor Snape to a duel: honour would still have been served.

“I know it is not wholly your fault. Who is to say whose fault it is? Your life, your upbringing, a lack of moral guidance in your formative years… You have been compelled to undergo more troubles in your short life than any child should rightly encounter in his entire lifetime. It is unfair, undeserved and, I should say, unprecedented. Although…” for a moment the old wizard’s attention meandered into an intellectual ox-bow, “…the 12th Century martyr, Sir George of Nottingham, did endure some remarkable ordeals at a very early age … But that is by the by.

“Whatever the reason,” Dumbledore reverted to the subject in hand, (though Harry had welcomed the digression and was quite ready to continue discussing the unhappy childhood of some medieval Knight in the east Midlands), “…whatever the reason, Harry, you display a cavalier attitude to rules and authority; your past successes have merely served to reinforce that lack of respect. The gloss of your - er - ‘celebrity’ has left you shiningly unaccountable. You have not courted favour or recognition, but you enjoy unequivocal status as ‘The Boy Who Lived’. In dealing with your past misdemeanours I have, perhaps, erred on the side of leniency.

“You seem to think that the end justifies the means. That, my boy, is a dangerous ideology. It has ruined many otherwise great wizards.”

Still Harry offered nothing in the way of self-defence. What was the point? Who would listen? If they had a problem with his attitude, what could he do about it? It was the Snape in him coming to the fore. Bad blood will out.

Dumbledore looked troubled by Harry’s continued silence.

“I find myself in a dilemma as to the most suitable form of punishment to impose. A whole year’s worth of detentions would be an insufficient penalty. Expulsion would, I fear, be the easy way out, both for Hogwarts and for you, Harry. No, we will not abandon you and throw you into the clutches of Voldemort.

“It will be more difficult, however, to evade the summary justice of the Ministry. Why, your wand alone, Harry, is enough to get you a life sentence in Azkaban. Ministry policy demands that it should be destroyed forthwith. If it ever got into the hands of an Auror, well, Merlin help you! It will, however, remain confiscated until I have decided whether or not to delete its spell memory. That would, you understand, make me complicit in your act of folly.”

Dumbledore had taken Harry’s wand out of a slim drawer in his desk. He stood now, twisting it between his gnarled fingers, an expression of deep distaste on his face.

“Ollivander warned me that this wand would spell trouble,” he said grimly. The ice-bright blue eyes chilled with anger. “Do you know how many Dark Curses this wand has cast in the last week? No, of course you don’t. Do you have any idea what you have done, child? You of all students are aware of the consequences of prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus. You have met Longbottom’s parents. Is that what you intended for Professor Snape? Have you no compassion? Severus almost died in that cellar!”

Dumbledore took off his half-moon spectacles and polished them on the sleeve of his cloak. He moved round behind the desk and sat down. When he next spoke, he sounded thoughtful.

“I understand that it is difficult for you to participate in school activities at the moment. Speculation is rife as to the nature of your disappearance. Young Malfoy, I believe, has rigidly defended your ‘alibi’ of being summoned by Voldemort, and Miss Granger has lent credence to the theory that Professor Snape went to your assistance. There was, may I say, a strong contingent who insisted that Severus would happily see you fry in Lobalung lard before lifting a finger… You have been lucky to have two such staunch supporters, especially in view of the fact that they appear to have been told differing versions of the actual truth…”

He let the implied accusation dangle for a moment, before shoring it up with his next reality check.

“Up until now I have not divulged the truth to anyone. In doing so, I am primarily respecting Severus’ wishes and, I hope, protecting your best interests. Have you considered what you’ve started with your thoughtlessness, Harry? There will be repercussions, you know. Voldemort will not let this rest. Not only have you hazarded your own future, but you have risked the career, the reputation and the very life of a most esteemed member of staff.

“Did you, at any point, stop to think what you were really doing, and how it might affect anyone other than yourself?

“Your meeting with Professor Snape this morning may not have ended cordially. It is hardly surprising after what you put him through. However, it is essential that the two of you come to some accord on the subject of your relationship. Until I know what you are going to do I cannot proceed with any very useful ‘damage limitation’ measures.

“I have a proposal, Harry, which you may find unappealing. It will be a challenge. It calls for a maturity beyond your years…”

Great, thought Harry. Bring it on…

“What do you want me to do, Sir?” he asked tremulously, though knowing full well that whatever it was that Dumbledore required of him - slaying Dragons, taming Manticores, writing very long Potions essays - he would end up doing whether he liked it or not.

“I want you to help Professor Snape,” Dumbledore said simply.

Harry’s eyes widened and he felt his stomach go into freefall. He was in no fit state to help anyone; he could barely function himself. Help Snape? Father or not, the man hated him. They couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without arguing. The best thing Harry could do to help was to stay out of his way.

“When I say ‘help’ I mean try to understand him,” Dumbledore continued gently and persuasively. “You owe him that much. Try to see things from his point of view.”

If I knew what that was. If he would actually speak to me. Harry was sceptical.

“If it makes it any easier, think of it as a project or a job I am asking you to do…”

But what if I don’t want this job? Do I have any choice? Harry felt his options closing in on him. A week’s detention with Professor Umbridge would have been preferable to this.

“Don’t look so worried, my boy! Severus won’t hurt you. I will forbid it! He’s no angel, but he won’t ask you to walk the plank… Oh dear, I seem to be mixing my metaphors somewhat.” A flash of humour entered the headmaster’s voice as he added, “But at least this Captain Hook has tamed his crocodile…eh, my boy! Tick tock!”

Harry was more than ever convinced that Dumbledore had lost the plot entirely. Either that or the doddery duffer routine was an exceptionally clever smokescreen. The Headmaster looked a little crestfallen,

“Evidently my attempt at Muggle humour has fallen flat. Well, well. You will find out for yourself soon enough.” That sounded ominous. Then, serious once more, he said softly,

“You know, Harry, he wants this to work out as much as you do.”

And how much is that? Harry asked himself. Probably a lot, he admitted, ruefully.

“Don’t expect too much too soon. You will have to spend time in each other’s company to reconcile your differences. It will not be plain sailing. Severus is a proud, independent man. He is no more willing to come to terms with his past than you are. But you, Harry, are the one, the only person who can help him. The two of you have much in common… I am fond of you both - it pains me to see you so estranged, especially now. Especially now…”

He repeated the last phrase, shaking his grey head sadly, lamenting the folly of wayward youth. And in a pinprick of empathy, Harry caught a glimpse of himself and Snape through the old wizard’s eyes: errant students both, spanning the generations with a bridge of shared trauma.

Harry didn’t have the energy to protest. He was aware that he was in the presence of a great wizard and that, as Ron would say, ‘resistance was futile’. Dumbledore’s mild, sage manner concealed power and unparalleled magical skill. Although he was feeling about as self-assertive as a Flubberworm, Harry’s sense of awe and deference was clouded by irritation - couldn’t the old guy just back off and leave him to sort out his own life? It wasn’t easy to forget the years of half-truths, white lies and well-intentioned subterfuge - the patronising protectiveness of Dumbledore’s ‘need to know’ policy. The anger and mistrust that had so distanced him last year, the unintentional link he had provided between Dumbledore and Voldemort, had left their mark. Now Dumbledore was investing his confidence in Harry; Harry felt obliged to repay him with obedience. He had been manoeuvred into it. Though he failed to see what he could possibly do that would be of any benefit to Snape whatsoever. He assumed the headmaster had a plan in mind. No such luck. Even this great wizard had no magic balm to heal the wound that separated father and son. He was throwing them in the ring together to fight it out between them.

“I do not want Professor Snape to resume his teaching duties for at least a week, until he is fully recovered from his ordeal. He is still not quite himself. I should like you to spend that week together, away from Hogwarts. Take time to get to know each other. You will both feel the benefit. Oh, and Harry …”

“Professor?”

“Look after him, Harry. Allow yourself to be kind.”

Harry’s emotional tourniquet took another twist. Dumbledore’s parting sentence left his eyes pricking with unshed tears. How did the old man know? How was it that in five short words he could express so concisely the barrier that Harry was barely able to identify, still less acknowledge. He wasn’t callous. Part of him wanted to reach out to Snape, to treat him decently and at least give him a chance to explain what had happened sixteen years ago. They might discover a core of humanity on which they could begin to build their relationship. He wanted to be ‘kind’. In Snape’s sitting room earlier, the phrases had been formed in Harry’s mind: ‘Look, Sir, I can see you’re not up to this. I’ll come back another day and we can talk about it then. ’ But he had shied away from saying them.

In Harry’s box of Every Flavour Emotions, the soft-centred Kindness Candies had been ousted by defensiveness, flippancy, scorn, aggression. Indifference tasted safer.

All his life Harry had nurtured a secret dream: that James was not really dead; that one day he would return and be reunited with his son. In Harry’s dream his father was strong, almost superhuman, someone he could admire and respect; someone who would love him unreservedly and be proud of him. Snape, on the other hand, had been his enemy for six years, inviolable, powerful, unassailable - and Harry had longed to discover his adversary’s tragic flaw. And now Snape was his father, and he was fallible. Love thine enemy? Harry didn’t think so. He wrestled with the paradox of human frailty.

When Hedwig had hurt her wing he had nursed her, smoothed her ruffled feathers, reassured her with soft, silly nonsense, like Ron with his baby Dranda - there had been no shame in tenderness. Today, seeing Snape coughing and obviously aching in every muscle had left Harry helpless, with a feeling of distaste for his own insensitivity, trapped inside his detachment like an insect in amber. Since when had sympathy been a sign of weakness?

“So where are we exactly?” Harry asked, looking about him eagerly in the misty twilight. He didn’t recognise the landscape at all: it was less bleak and craggy than the countryside around Hogwarts, with low, hummocky hills nestled together like green apples in a giant fruit-bowl.

They had Floo-ed from Snape’s office. It must have been a direct flue because Harry hadn’t heard Snape shout any destination. They had emerged, after what seemed a very long journey (though Floo trips could be deceptive) in a dirty, cobwebby grate, littered with hazel twigs and dried bird droppings. The room was unlit and unfurnished. A maroon of panic flared in Harry’s mind as, for an irrational instant, he thought Snape had taken him back to Voldemort’s cellar. He trailed after Snape, out of the empty building - it was a small, single-storey labourer’s cottage, stone-built and thatched, and in a state of total disrepair - and into a grassy field.

Harry wondered where in Merlin’s magic they were, and where they were going.

“That’s not your house, then?” he quipped, hoping to elicit some kind of a response from the Professor. They had not spoken to each other all afternoon. Snape had assented to Dumbledore’s plan with bad grace: a week in the company of Harry Potter was not his idea of a quiet convalescence. His only reply to Harry’s query was a snort of derision.

They crossed the field in silence, the wet grass draggling their trousers. A knot of woolly sheep, their fleeces tinged ginger from rolling on the reddish soil - no need of a Reddleman in this part of the country - stared at them nonchalantly as they approached, holding their ground in mock defiance and, at the last minute, breaking and scattering in manic disarray.

“Where are we going, Sir?” Harry persevered.

“There is a short walk to reach the house,” Snape answered curtly. “I prefer not to use the final grate in the Floo - the house grate,” he elaborated, seeing the confusion on Harry’s face. “In my profession it pays to be…”

Paranoid, thought Harry.

“…cautious.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to Apparate here, Sir?”

Sometimes Harry felt he would never fully grasp the subtle protocols of wizard travel.

“Underage restrictions still apply, Potter, despite you eagerness to disregard them. You may be anxious to flaunt your newly acquired skill, but I doubt if Professor Dumbledore would share your enthusiasm. He has had enough trouble in dissuading the Ministry from pressing charges for your last Apparating escapade.”

Harry bristled. Had Snape forgotten that that last ‘escapade’, as he chose to call it, had saved his life? The memory of the blinding green Curse forked into his mind and for several missing heartbeats he was locked back in the cellar, dragging the unconscious Professor upright, beseeching every unseen Power on the planet to enable them to Apparate away from that death-trap. He could feel again the unresisting, dead weight of the man in his arms… Was it only a week ago? How immeasurably had his life changed in seven days.

Harry hurried to catch up with Snape who had not noticed him lagging behind.

“…geological formation and resultant magnetic distortion,” he was saying, “can make Apparation unreliable.”

Harry prayed that the Professor wasn’t planning to test him on all this later.

From the field they continued into a narrow lane, wide enough for a single vehicle only, and sunken, with bushy hedges rearing up several feet atop already banked verges. After about fifty yards they branched into a side road. Snape stopped and muttered a sequence of passwords.

“My property is protected by boundary spells similar to those at Hogwarts. Once inside you must follow me closely; there are still… ..dangers. Without the password you would not be able to proceed beyond that gateway.”

Harry had not even noticed a gateway. He could have sworn that the verge and hedge continued uninterrupted until they merged into the evening gloom. He suspected that the gate had only become visible after Snape’s incantation. But there it was, indisputably: black, strong, wrought-iron vertical bars, rising in an elegant arc, topped by arrow-head finials. On each half of the gate the initials S D were wrought into the iron-work, entwined as though the very metal had woken briefly to organic life, snaked itself into a living signature and then coiled once more to sleep.

“What does S D stand for, Sir?” Harry had to ask.

“Snape Delaford. That is the name of the village. My house is part of the original Delaford estate.”

This raised a host of new questions. Harry realised, with a shock, that he had never seriously considered Snape’s family background. He would never have imagined that he had an entire village named after him. After a moment’s thought, Harry rationalised that most Death Eaters came from Pureblood families, and most of those were, or at some time had been, fairly affluent. Snape probably lived in a whopping great mansion with turrets and secret passages and reverberating baronial halls.

“Is it a big house, Sir?”

“Snape Manor is large. Too large for my purposes. It has been unoccupied for many years. Too big, too cold, too many…” he checked himself, mid-sentence. Harry was sure he had been about to say ‘memories’, though it could just as easily have been ‘rats’.

“Do not nurture any grandiose expectations, Potter. My house is small and unpretentious. ‘Multum in parvo’, remember that. What it lacks in character, it gains in anonymity - never underestimate the value of anonymity if you want to be left in peace.”

They were passing along a walk of evergreen, small-leaved yew trees, densely planted and clipped into submission. Snape suddenly swung left, through an archway in the dark foliage.

“Snape Cottage,” he announced succinctly.

It was like a bigger, well-maintained version of the derelict building where the Floo had deposited them. The walls were of the same red sandstone, but the roof, instead of a romantic, rustic thatch, was plain tiled. They entered a white-washed, candle-lit passageway with two doors leading off either side. Harry followed Snape into a compact sitting room. An embryonic fire was already glowing in the grate; Snape snapped his fingers and it immediately leaped into flame, casting a fiery sunset into even the dimmest corners. Throwing his cloak over the back of a low, dark armchair near the fire, Snape sank down heavily into it, with something between a cough and a sigh.

Piqued, Harry stood fidgeting with his hands in his pockets. He had expected a guided tour, or at least to be shown to his room, and Snape was all but ignoring him. What was this - more psychological mind games? What mental hoops did he have to jump through now, before the man would condescend to talk to him?

“Sir?” A shade of self-assertion coloured the word.

“What is it now, Potter?”

Having spent the last hour or so traipsing along behind him, Harry had not really seen much of Snape that afternoon except the back of his coat. Now he observed that the Professor looked pale and shattered. He was still not well. Suddenly Dumbledore’s parting words sounded in Harry’s brain as clearly as if he had been in the room with them: ‘Allow yourself to be kind’.

“Can I get you anything, Sir? Do you want some tea, or something?”

There, he’d said it! And his tongue hadn’t shrivelled like an African tribal trophy; he had not been reduced to a quivering gelatinous mass like Porlock trotters in a stockpot.

It was so obvious that Snape’s instinctive reaction was to yell at Harry to go away that he might just as well have said it out loud. But he made the effort to be civil.

“You can pour me a drink, if you want to make yourself useful,” he said, inclining his head to indicate a rosewood tallboy near the window on which there was a chunky decanter and several shot goblets. Harry poured out the entire contents, a generous two fingers, marvelling at the way the thick, unadorned glass of the decanter reflected a shifting kaleidoscope of rainbow light, as though the plain, smooth surface were cut into a million crystal facets. He inhaled the sharp, spicy tang of Firewhisky.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Harry’s first impression was, despite Snape’s warning, one of anticlimax. There was nothing even remotely Gothic about this room. No sinister ancestral portraits glared their disapproval from weighty frames peopled with macabre carved tableaux from the Inferno. There were no pictures or photographs on display at all. No fraying medieval tapestries depicting grotesque scenes of mayhem and torture swayed suspiciously against blood-spattered panelling. The walls were rough-plastered and, like the hallway, simply whitewashed. There was not even a drooling Deerhound sprawled on the hearth.

The room contrived to be both austere and comfortable at the same time. It had a distinctly well-ordered, masculine feel about it: no clutter, no nick-knacks or personal ornaments - unless you count the wizard chess board - no decorative frills. It had a disciplined air of timeless quality and quiet taste. Was this what Snape meant by ‘anonymity’?

It was the very absence of personal possessions that gave the room its identity: it was a clean canvas for its owner. The strength of Snape’s personality was such that he needed no props to fill the space. Every object had a function; there was no gratuitous sentimentality here. It was stark, but saved from sterility by something intangible. Harry sensed it, but for a time it defied identification. Then he realised what it was: the room felt safe.

First impressions of an almost monastic restraint about furnishings and décor were also deceptive. The old oak floorboards were bare, certainly, but polished smooth and waxed to a deep, warm sheen, and overlaid, Harry guessed, with a Quiet Charm to soften the echoing click of boot heels on wood. Near the window there was a basic table and four chairs, also in aged oak, their Shaker simplicity concealing supreme craftsmanship in the impeccable dovetail jointing and symmetry of the grain.

Bookshelves covered the entire end wall. Harry would have liked to scan the titles - he felt a thrill of anticipation at the thought that most, if not all, of those volumes would probably have been classified in the ‘restricted’ section at Hogwarts. Well, Snape was hardly likely to have a collection of Mills & Boon, was he? But Harry was not yet confident about making himself at home - browsing would have to wait.

Dark curtains the colour of the night sky stood out in stark contrast to the pale walls. The fabric was, at first sight, unpatterned and untextured, but out of the corner of his eye (he wasn’t especially looking, fabric not being his scene) Harry detected a movement. Was it just a ripple in the heavy drape, stirred by an unfelt draught, or shadows waltzing in the firelight, or - and now Harry began to look more closely - were there images deep within the material itself, planets, stars, creatures, leaves, their fleeting outlines defined in a second’s altered emphasis of texture amidst the soft folds; they appeared and disappeared in an infinitely random rotation, soundlessly surfacing and sinking like curious fish from the depths of the ocean.

Harry watched, completely mesmerised, until a cough from Snape pulled his attention back to the present. He moved over to the fire and sat down in the other armchair, which immediately moulded itself to support his body, opposite the Professor. The double Firewhisky had both revived and mellowed him.

“If there is anything you require, Potter, you can try to find Quig - but if he’s not around you may be obliged to fend for yourself.”

“Quick?”

“Quig - with a ‘g’. A house elf, of sorts. Woefully inefficient and almost invariably unavailable when you want him.” Snape gave a fairly damning character reference. “He acts as caretaker for this place and also the Manor - pretty much a sinecure as I am rarely in residence. An enthusiastic polisher …” he gestured towards the fanatically shined brass fender, “but his culinary skills are execrable. I hope you can cook?”

The question took Harry by surprise, but he answered with assurance,

“Oh yes, Sir. I’ve had loads of practice.”

“Indeed? With your Muggle family, I presume?”

Harry was unwilling to change the subject to the Dursleys. He was too intrigued at hearing Snape talking for once about something unconnected with Potions or Harry’s own scholastic underachievement. He was also, he had to confess, still pole-axed by the sheer incongruity of the situation: ensconced in Snape’s own home, engaging the Potions master in polite small-talk - it was absurd! He guessed that Snape too was having to work hard at the conversation. Harry tried to manoeuvre the topic back to the unfortunate elf. It seemed odd that Snape would employ anyone with less than outstanding credentials.

“So is Quig your family house elf?” He hoped it was a leading question.

“Indeed. He has been with the Snape family for years. His full name is, I believe, Quigley, but no one ever called him that - except my mother. She acquired him while travelling in the Antipodes, and he has been with us ever since.”

Snape had a mother?

“Quig’s primary interest is in managing the herb garden - he cultivates a number of rare varieties that I require as Potions’ ingredients. He is less competent about his domestic duties.”

Harry nodded, assuming that the topic of the elf was now exhausted, but Snape continued obliquely,

“You may experience some difficulty in locating or summoning him, if he is anywhere other than inside the house. When we were young, we would leave written messages for him. It reached the point where we had a small blackboard in each room for writing up his instructions. It saved us the asinine rigmarole of attempting to communicate orally.”

“I don’t understand, Sir.”

“Quig is deaf. Stone deaf.”

Harry eyed Snape to check that he wasn’t kidding, but he seemed serious enough. This was bizarre. Harry was fascinated to hear more about the story, but he didn’t want to pry. It was extraordinary to hear Snape mentioning his family. Was it just the Firewhisky talking, or had he made a deliberate decision to be more forthcoming? Or was it just that, now he was on his home territory, he could afford to loosen up a little?

“Blackboards don’t sound very magical, Sir.”

“They were not. And intentionally so.” The window of confidence was about to slam shut if Harry pushed too far. It seemed he was not allowed to look through that one.

“But how…?” Harry came at it from a different angle.

“…do you summon Quig now?” Snape completed the sentence for him. “Hand me that container, will you?”

Harry fetched a small onyx urn from the mantelpiece and passed it to the Professor. Removing the lid he took out a pinch of black sand which he flicked expertly into the fire.

“That Floo-flare will cause an eruption of sparks and a not inconsiderable amount of smoke to be produced in whichever room the elf happens to be. It is usually sufficient to attract his attention.”

Snape dusted off his hands fastidiously and returned the urn to Harry.

“Sir, why don’t you just sack him or free him, and get an elf that isn’t so handicapped?”

Incredulity, amusement, disgust and resignation all flickered across Snape’s face.

“And have the inquisitors from the Department of Elf Employment hounding me? You should suggest that to Miss Granger - I’m sure she can cite numerous ministerial decrees to prevent just such a course of action. No, Quig was once of great service to my family. I keep him on in recognition of that.”

A brisk rapping noise sounded behind them. An unimaginably ancient elf was silhouetted in the doorway - he had knocked to announce his presence rather than to request admission.

“He doesn’t speak much either,” Snape added dryly.

The elf nodded a couple of times as though listening to instructions on a frequency beyond Harry’s auditory range. Then he shuffled away, closing the door after him. Harry’s eyes scoured the room for an invisible blackboard. Or had Snape used some form of telepathic communication?

“I sign,” Snape explained simply. “He understands that. And his lip-reading is improving, though you do have to enunciate as though you are in a Curse Casting Competition. He will bring you tea and some food. It may be edible.”

“Aren’t you eating…?” To his surprise, Harry found that he did not want the conversation to end. As long as they avoided controversial subjects they had managed to remain on speaking terms.

“I have things to do. Good night, Potter.”

Snape rose, a little stiffly, and left the room. Harry found it quite endearing that the Professor had not been able to admit that he was tired and was going to bed.

Curling his legs up under him in the armchair which, like everything else in the room, was far more comfortable than it looked, Harry reflected that this week at Snape Cottage promised to be rather interesting.

It was late by the time Harry made his way down to the kitchen the next morning. He had not slept well and his brain felt stale and stewed. Despite the lack of instructions he had found his bedroom easily enough - the door had been spelled to open at his approach and it swung back invitingly as he crept up the stairs. That was the most inviting thing about it - the room itself was Spartan, to say the least. There had been more in the way of creature comforts at the Leaky Cauldron. Snape, predictably, did not believe in molly-coddling. Once Harry lay down, though, the bed was comfortable enough, but even so he had lain awake for several hours, alert to the many silences of the sleeping house…

What would Ron and Hermione think if they could see him now? A guest in Snape Cottage! Actually living in the dragon’s den! They’d never believe it was so, well, ‘normal’. Away from Hogwarts, Snape didn’t seem half so strange or intimidating: maybe he really was just a regular wizard who mowed the lawn and polished his broomstick on a Sunday afternoon. But how unlike him to employ a deaf house elf out of some sense of family loyalty. Hermione would be his fan for life once she heard that. And all that stuff about Snape’s family! Those initials on the gate! What was that name again? Harry was too sleepy to remember. Well, the Professor hadn’t actually said very much, but there was more - there had to be more. Maybe something really juicy. Ron would just love to get the dirt on the Potions master and his slimy relations.

The knowledge that that last category now included himself filled Harry with queasy dread. Feeling uncertainty rising towards his throat, he quelled it with some Occlumency exercises. He had tried to convince himself he was cool about this situation - after all, Dumbledore expected him to cope - but, in truth, he had no idea how to begin to relate to this stranger, his father. At this moment they were separated only by a lath and plaster wall - Harry could hear Snape muttering in his sleep, coughing sometimes; he was a restless sleeper too - but that wall might as well have been a mile thick.

Tomorrow, tomorrow he would have to pin Snape down to answering some serious questions…

* * * * * * * * * * * *

There was a jug of coffee, still hot, on the kitchen table. Harry poured himself a cup and sat down to ponder his next move. The liquid hit his taste-buds like embalming fluid, strong enough to skin a badger. Wow! Who does he think he is - Balzac? thought Harry, surfing on a caffeine tsunami. If he drinks this stuff no wonder he’s edgy.

Snape didn’t appear to be around. Harry had poked his head into the sitting room as he passed but there was no sign of him there either. The perfect host. It was a relief not to have to face him over breakfast. The thought of that was a bit too domestic for Harry to handle right now. He was still sucking coffee grounds out of his teeth when a plateful of food appeared on the table in front of him. At the same time a soft smacking noise alerted him to the arrival of Quig, who ambled into the room like a bald, leathery penguin, his long, bare feet slapping the flagstones.

Harry saw the elf in daylight for the first time. He was pleased to note that Snape did not allow him to go about in rags like Dobby or Winky. Though the apron affair he wore could not be called clothing, it was at least respectable. The elf’s features were lost amidst layers upon folds of shrivelled wrinkles, like a dehydrated Shar-pei. His ears - Harry knew it was rude, but he couldn’t help staring at the ears - seemed to have lost a long battle with leprosy, or else he’d played too much rugby as a child: they had all but disappeared, leaving knobby cauliflowers of cartilage that bulged from the side of his head like lumps of pumice. Two hawk-bright eyes peered back through the fleshy fringe at Harry. The eroded face suddenly crumbled into a tartar-brown smile and, nodding vigorously at the plate on the table, the elf gave Harry a double thumbs up. It seemed like a question.

“Lovely! Thank you very much.” Harry spoke distinctly. He turned his attention to the food, as yet untouched. There was a piece of something very hard and fishy, which might have been a kipper but looked like pemmican, four tiny, crisply fried eggs (another generation of thrushes lost to the world) and a soggy pile of paintbox-coloured mushrooms, their lacy undersides frilled in varying shades of purple and lavender.

“Where. Is. Snape. ?” Harry hoped the elf wouldn’t take offence at his leaving out ‘Professor’ but he wanted to stick to words of one syllable. Quig nodded again, produced an envelope from the pocket of his apron and, his errands accomplished, slapped out of the kitchen.

‘This is crazy,’ Harry said to himself, noticing his hands trembling as he opened the letter, ‘it’s only a letter.’ From Snape. So he hadn’t forgotten about Harry completely. Just the sight of the precise, perfectly quilled script made Harry nervous. It began without any form of salutation. Harry chuckled to himself: he doesn’t know how to address me!

‘I shall be occupied with estate business at Snape Manor this morning. The ground rules in effect for the duration of your visit are as follows:

1 No magic is to be performed unless in my presence.

2 The two basement rooms in the cottage are strictly out of bounds.

3 You are to stay within the protected perimeter of the property.

4 If you go into the estate grounds stay on the paths at all times. Do not approach the lake.

5 Refuse to eat any fried fungus provided by Quig.

6 If Braque attempts to lick you, stand perfectly still and you will not be injured.

Today you are to collect the fresh ingredients to prepare an Emergency Emetic Antidote - they are all available in the walled garden. You will find the recipe in Appendix 5 of Herbal Heroes: 1001 Common Kitchen Killers (bookcase, second shelf, third volume). Factor in your age, weight, height and wand reference number to customise the quantities required for your personal use.

Yours,

SS

That was not a reassuring letter. Meals were obviously a death-defying gamble; there was something dodgy in the basement - what a surprise – and the patronising bastard was treating him like a toddler who might get lost in the garden or fall in the lake. He knew how to swim, for Merlin’s sake. And who the hell was Braque?

As Harry skimmed through the letter a second time, feeling crosser at each new prohibition, he became aware that a large, craggy boulder by the back door, which he had taken to be an oversized doorstop, was gradually uncurling. One thick, scaly leg emerged, ending in a webbed foot with five dagger-sharp claws. The curved base of the rock that Harry had assumed to be some kind of plinth, started to straighten and flex. Another stocky leg inched forward. A sandy grey, blunt-snouted reptilian head raised itself by infinitesimal degrees and an eye-slit shuttered open.

Oh fantastic, looks like I’m going to meet Braque! Harry froze. He could feel shock tingling his fingers as the blood withdrew to defend his inner keep. His mouth was so dry he’d even have been grateful for a slug of Snape’s coffee.

The creature came towards him with glacial slowness, not seeming to move its limbs at all, but covering the ground by some process of animal osmosis. It was about four feet long, half of that being a muscular, ridged tail, the peaks of which continued up along the rough-scaled back in a spiny crest. There was something crocodilian about it, but it’s head was shorter and rounded with jowly pouches under a wide, frog-like mouth. Put a frilly collar round its neck and it would look like professor Umbridge!

It came within biting distance of Harry and imperceptibly halted. A purple, forked tongue darted out and flicked the veins on Harry’s wrist. He whimpered, desperate not to flinch. Flick… flick… the tongue was cold, a shard of ice, licking, tasting…

It was growing, getting taller. Harry realised that it was, muscle by rippling muscle, rearing up onto its sturdy hind legs, bracing itself on its tail, a living, prehistoric stony tripod. One scale-armoured paw rested heavily against Harry’s heaving chest, the claws piercing his shirt through to the skin. The tongue flicked upwards, sipping at Harry’s face, snaking into his ear… He clenched his eyes shut. He felt a forked scalpel sliding into his nostril, whipping away, sliding back…

And then it began its tidal retreat, ebbing back towards the doorway. When Harry finally dared to open his eyes, it had gone, easing itself into the garden with all the urgency of a fossil.

Weak and clammy, Harry sank down at the table, resting his head on his arms and shaking with tears of relief, shock and anger. Then he threw up into the sink.

“The bastard! Bastard, bastard; slimy, greasy bastard…”

It was lucky that Snape didn’t return at that moment. Harry might have told him what he really thought.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Snape’s bookshelves were a complete library of the Dark Arts. Before he permitted himself the indulgence of browsing through the forbidden texts, Harry skimmed along the second shelf and prised down ‘Herbal Heroes’. If Snape caught him, he’d have a valid excuse for being there.

Harry was spoilt for choice. From Gardeners’ 'Medical Miscellany’ to Dr Lazarus’ ‘The Naked Necromancer’, the extremes of magical life and all shades in between were housed on those shelves. There were even a couple of wizard novels – ‘Judas Jinx’ and ‘Poison, Obliquely’, though from their pristine appearance they looked as though they had never been read. Harry initially made his selection based more on the attractiveness of the books’ spines and covers than on the subject matter. The first one he chose, ‘Tropical Toxins’ had a prickly cactus embossed on the jungle design cover, entwined with gold tooled vines and creepers. It looked extremely exotic, but the inside was a turgid list of botanical plant names, source locations and their toxicity rating. ‘Nugget or Mullock? - Alchemy Downunder’ was stylishly bound in mahogany Morocco, but again the endless paragraphs of small, dense print, unrelieved by illustrations or subdivisions, made it heavy reading. Some clichés really are based on fact, he reflected.

Harry began to pull books out at random. From the history shelf came ‘The Foreign Vocabulary of the Occult’ and ‘Al-Aswadiyyah and the Eastern Tradition’ - Hermione might have found them interesting, but Harry was not inspired. There were several shelves devoted to plant properties, poisons and antidotes, mineralogy and the animal kingdom. ‘A Passion for Potions’ caught Harry’s eye. It contained three versions of ‘Dreamless Sleep’ potion - perhaps he’d see if he could try some of them out. Madam Pomfrey’s recipe never seemed terribly effective.

The good stuff - or bad stuff, depending on your point of view - was on the top shelf. Standing on his tip-toes, Harry could just reach to tease the spines out of their tight positions in the ranks. A flattish set of ring-bound pages was lying horizontally across several books, furred with dust. Moving it out of the way, Harry could see that it was an old Dark Arts’ calendar: ‘Bloodlust ’86 ’. Harry gasped. He had heard of these calendars, but he’d never seen one; they were strictly banned at Hogwarts. Rumour had it that they showed ‘artistic’, tastefully posed (who do they think they’re kidding?) photographs of well-endowed witches, in lurid scenes of dismemberment, auto da fé, noyade and worse; gruesome images of torture, violence and depravity. The moving wizard pictures actually revealed the women writhing in the agony of their death throes.

Harry was sweating. Just holding the wretched calendar felt like a violation. But, at the same time, the sixteen year old inside him was clamouring for a quick peek, or even an eye-full. ’86 ? he thought - Snape would only have been a couple of years older than I am now. Dirty s.o.d. ! Trembling with anticipation, Harry lifted the grimy cover… The naked witch thrashed and gasped before his eyes, clawing desperately at the tightening garrotte around her neck, in the final seconds of strangulation…

Harry never got beyond January. He stuffed the calendar back onto the shelf, then stood wiping his hands down the front of his shirt, as though by that action he could physically erase his revulsion.

One fat volume, heavier than he had bargained for, toppled from his stretching fingers and slammed down onto the floor with a crash. Harry snatched it up guiltily, turning it over and around, to check that the spine was not damaged, the pages not bent. ‘Encore a l’Enfer: les Maledictions Diaboliques’. Could Snape actually read this? He shoved it hastily back into its place and reached for ‘Herbal Heroes’, expecting someone to burst in and catch him snooping. But Snape was still at the Manor and Quig could not hear. There was no one to judge him. After a couple of minutes his heartbeat levelled off at something approaching its normal rhythm. Phew!

He was more careful with the next one. Using two hands he lifted down an old, worn copy of ‘Into Darknesse’ and opened the cover. The fronts-piece bore an illustrated bookplate: five snakes, their tails entwined to form a continuous serpentine border, surrounded the Latin motto:

‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regulare’ .

In the centre of the bookplate, in a hand-written, italic script were the words:

‘Ex Libris Lucius Malfoy’.

Harry could hardly contain his excitement. Had this book perhaps been a gift from Malfoy, or had Snape merely forgotten to return it? He began to turn the yellowing pages, and as he did so a dog-eared bookmark slipped out and onto the floor. Harry bent to pick it up. It was a photograph. In the foreground a group of three men had their backs to the camera. One of them had shoulder length white-blond hair. They were waving to another man who was bare-back riding a Hungarian Horntail, flexing and arching in synchrony with the ferociously flailing dragon as it lashed and bucked and twisted to unseat its dare-devil rider. The rider was Snape. Younger and with his dark hair tied back, but unmistakably Snape. Well cool, thought Harry, pocketing the photo.

It came as quite a revelation to see this dynamic, dashing version of the Potions master. Harry found himself wondering what else Snape had got up to in his youth. He must have been a reasonable Quidditch player, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to referee the school matches, but he never mentioned it. Perhaps he had ridden a motorbike like Sirius, something noisy and powerful like a huge, old Norton. An image of Snape in a long leather biker coat and goggles popped into Harry’s mind, making him grin briefly. Maybe not.

Guilt was making him jumpy. He fancied he heard a door bang and immediately thrust the book back into its empty slot on the high shelf. Again he waited, tension beading his brow. This spying was a stressful business. Again it was a false alarm.

The next title he chanced upon made him smile, Harding’s ‘Curses and Incantations: New Choral Settings’. What the heck…? He supposed the Death Eaters must chant at their Black Masses. Sheet music was pretty meaningless to Harry. He was putting the folio away when he noticed another small, insignificant volume, hidden in the space behind the front row of titles. He pulled it out indifferently. ‘An Anthology of Modern French Verse’ ? What in Merlin’s name did Snape want with that? Was it another present from Malfoy? There was no bookplate, but Harry’s heart clenched when he read the name pencilled lightly in the top right hand corner of the fly-leaf: Lily Evans.

Why did Snape have her book? What right had he? Had he stolen it? Had she given it to him? Harry clutched it tightly, his mind brimming with questions and for the second time that morning he felt tears in his eyes. He’d only been staying with Snape for one day and already he was losing it!

There was no mistaking the door this time. It swung violently open, the knob gouging a fresh gash in the plaster scabs on the wall behind, and Snape’s figure filled the hallway. Muttering ‘Murum reparo’ as a matter of course, in the way that most people might say ‘hello’, he made straight for the forbidden basement. In each hand he was holding something at arm’s length by its tail - small, long, wiry creatures that corkscrewed and jack-knifed in his fingers, emitting a series of almost ultrasonic squeals. Harry heard a muffled word of command, immediately followed by a grating noise as the door scraped over an uneven threshold, then a sharp intake of breath and an angry expletive.

Harry stood paralysed with guilt, as though Snape had, in passing, shot him with Petrificus Totalus, his mother’s poetry book still in his hands. Breathing deeply, he poked it back into its hiding place, grabbed ‘Herbal Heroes’ and scooted for the kitchen. When Snape reappeared some minutes later, Harry had already boiled some water and had discovered a crock of eggs - real hens’ eggs - which he was preparing to scramble. Having not eaten any of Quig’s breakfast, he was starving.

“You received my note? Have you collected the Potion ingredients?” was Snape’s opening remark. No social niceties such as ‘Did you sleep well?’ or ‘Have you had a good morning?’.

Oh hell, here we go. I’ll cop it now.

“No, Sir. I’m sorry, Sir. I woke up late. I was just checking the recipe,” Harry answered contritely, knowing that he was in the wrong, waiting for the excoriation to begin. But Snape merely nodded; he seemed subdued and distracted.

“You need to get it done soon, it is important. Quig…”

“I know, Sir. He cooked me breakfast.”

The Professor made no further comment. He sat down, fathoms deep in his own preoccupations. The sight of him at the kitchen table stirred a memory in Harry: Snape and Sirius in the kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place, arguing. Arguing about him. Father and God-father - what would they have said if they’d known? Sirius would have hated it. Oh, Sirius…

Forcing himself to focus on practicalities, Harry cooked and poured the tea. He didn’t yet trust himself to broach the subject of Sirius. He plonked a mug in front of Snape and, after a furious deliberation with himself, not sure if it was the right thing to do at all, a plate of eggs. Bolting his own food, he eyed the professor anxiously, feeling that he might have somehow overstepped the mark. Snape swallowed, barely aware of what he was eating. Harry had seen him in many moods - angry, impatient, intense, analytical, stoically enduring, even resigned to die – but never like this. Never so disengaged and, well, empty.

It’s really inconvenient of him. How come it’s never a good time to ask questions? For the questions were now starting to pile up, the events of the morning seething inside him. Harry wondered if it were possible to spur Snape into conversation.

“What were those creatures you brought back, Sir? The ones you took down to the ‘basement’?” The sarcastic side to the last word was intentional.

“What?”

The Professor looked up, momentarily disorientated. Then he dragged himself back from wherever it was he had been.

“The creatures? Oh, Cashmere-coated Gruber Weasels. A breeding pair. They escaped last week, so Quig informed me. I was fortunate to come across them on my way back from the Manor. Their pancreatic fluid contains a potent softening enzyme, and the fur, evidently, has its uses. Extremely vicious for their size.” He examined his index finger, where blood was spotting from two small, evenly spaced puncture wounds.

“So the basement is where you …?” Harry was beginning to understand and to regret his melodramatic assumptions.

“Where I keep and raise specimens. One of the rooms is a small laboratory. What did you think, Potter? That it was some kind of venue for clandestine activity? I do not issue arbitrary prohibitions. You are not to go in there unaccompanied for a good reason - I possess several highly dangerous species. You are not to put yourself at unnecessary risk.”

He’s doing that ‘protective’ thing again. If only he weren’t so damned autocratic about it. Harry was still annoyed, even though at least four of the points in Snape’s irritating note had been justified.

“What about the lake, then? I can swim, you know!”

“You know nothing about the contents of that lake!” Snape flashed angrily. “For your information it sustains three of the most poisonous creatures known to man. Have you heard of Friedman’s sea snake? I suppose that would be expecting too much. It is the most venomous snake in the world. What about the Metatron Puffer fish? A drop of its poison would kill you in less than twenty minutes. Valmont’s water wasp? Another name that has presumably eluded your attention. Highly dangerous. Perhaps you know it as the ‘Mad Monk’ jellyfish? No? Sixty tentacles, each containing millions of poisonous nematocysts? Need I go on, Potter? Do you still fancy a swim?”

“But don’t those things live in the sea? That’s a lake!” Harry’s comfortable illusions about the dull normality of Snape’s little country cottage, were slipping into quicksand and sinking fast.

“Do you know that? Your assumptions are based on what, Potter? On what is conventional? On the laws of Muggle physics? The mind of a true wizard is open to infinite possibilities. Habitats can be manipulated, environments modified…”

“I know that now!” retorted Harry, fighting the furious suspicion that he had been set a secret test and had just spectacularly failed. Snape didn’t play fair. He didn’t give you any information and then castigated you for not knowing it anyway. Bastard! That word tripped a switch and another grievance shot out of the trap. Scraping his chair back as he stood up, Harry bellowed indignantly at Snape,

“And what the hell is Braque?”

“Language, Potter.” The reprimand was automatic; Snape didn’t actually seem that bothered. “Did he lick your hand?”

“My hand? My hand? Yeah, right. And my face. And my ears. It even stuck its tongue right up my friggin’ nose!” At the thought of that flickering, slimy probe Harry was almost ready to heave again.

“Ah.” A brief smirk brightened Snape’s face.

“It’s not funny! You could have warned me!”

“I thought I had. You have not been bitten. You followed instructions from… Let me see, who might have given you instructions? Well, Potter?”

“Yes, alright. But you never tell me enough. There are all these things I want to know, and you never tell me anything…”

Harry had passed him an easy Quaffle. All Snape had to do was fly with it and throw it through the hoop. The ball hovered between them, daring Snape to take possession. For a few seconds he hesitated… …then he swerved, dodging an imaginary Bludger.

“Braque is very rare,” he said, “he is a Tuatara.”

“Tuatara? Hagrid’s not done those with us yet. What can it do - apart from lick you to death?” Though still angry, Harry couldn’t help but be curious. Snape gave him a pitying glance and adopted the supercilious, professorial tone that Harry recognised from the classroom:

“A Tuatara is not a Magical Creature. It’s a reptile, native to New Zealand. There are very few left in the wild. Its species is the sole survivor of a group of animals that is now extinct. They resemble lizards in many ways, but the two are in fact quite different. And Braque is exceptional because of his virtually amphibian ability to swim. You are aware, Potter, that many lizards cannot swim?”

“And I suppose he lives in the sodding lake too?”

“At present he has the run of the estate. But it may be impractical for him to enter the house once he is fully grown.” Snape’s gaze travelled round the kitchen, assessing the width of the doorways.

“You mean that thing’s still a baby?” Harry exclaimed, horrified. “Just how big does it get?”

“I’m not sure. Braque is already a large specimen. It may even be that he has already achieved his full growth potential. Pure bred Tuatara rarely grow much after the age of sixty years.”

“Sixty!” To Harry this discussion was bordering on the surreal, but Snape seemed open to chatting about his disgusting dinosaur creature. Why couldn’t he be this frank about everything else?

“My family has owned him for almost that long. I am reliably informed that Tuatara can live to twice that age.”

“A good wizard pet, then?” commented Harry. Then, making a shrewd stab, “That’s it, isn’t it? He’s your idea of a pet?”

Snape shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“There is evidence of a highly evolved intelligence. He is trained and obedient. And he guards the premises.”

Harry scoffed,

“Not exactly built for speed though, is he? Wouldn’t burglars just run away, or nick past him?”

He illustrated his point with a feint round an invisible Braque and a quick flourish of an equally invisible cloak. (In his mind he was already working it up for Ron into a pun about a Tua-Toreador.) Up until then he had been standing with his hands in his pockets (again). It was a defensive stance and he made a mental note to avoid it in future - Snape picked up on body language.

He came to an abrupt halt. The photograph had fallen out of his pocket and lay face up on the floor like an unexploded Puff Pod. The young Snape gave them an insolent wave and the dragon lashed its tail, snorting blue sparks.

“Where did you get that?” Snape hissed. His face, pale enough already, was now white with anger, his low voice mercury smooth and just as lethal. “Give it to me!”

Harry sighed and handed over the picture. Snape took it wordlessly, and, without meeting Harry’s eyes, stalked out of the room.

It was the Pensieve incident all over again. Only this time he’s too angry even to yell at me, thought Harry in despair. Things had been going so well, too. He wished Hermione were there to give him some sensible, constructive advice; she’d know what to do. She’d say something practical like, ‘Have another cup of tea’, or ‘Go fly a broomstick’ or ‘Finish your homework’. What would she do in this situation? But Harry already knew; he could almost hear her saying it, ‘Go and talk to him, Harry.’ Why did women always want to talk about things? Who did Snape ever talk to? Dumbledore? Possibly. Quig? Braque?

From the garden came the noise of a sharp explosion. Well, that’s one photo that won’t be in the albums. Harry rather approved of Snape’s solution to the problem: blowing something up was infinitely more satisfactory, than discussing it. He was surprised, though, that the professor hadn’t simply tossed the offending picture into the fire. Perhaps he’s detonated some of his anger too; perhaps he was pretending it was me! Harry had an image of his minutely fragmented body parts dispersed throughout the estate, an appetising fresh snack for whatever gruesome, flesh-eating beasts Snape undoubtedly harboured in his grounds.

With a great deal of misgiving Harry prepared to go outside and meet his father. He could see him through the kitchen window, staring at the singed patch of grass where only a few charred flakes were all that remained of the photograph. People could be sensitive about the strangest things; Harry had considered it quite flattering. As an afterthought, he picked up Snape’s cloak from the back of the chair. Dumbledore would be proud of him.

“I’m sorry, Sir. Here…You should put this on.” Harry thrust the cloak at him, and rushed on with his apology before he bottled out. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been looking at that book and I shouldn’t have taken the photo. It’s just that it looked so cool, riding a Horntail; and I wanted…” Harry hadn’t admitted this, even to himself; he hadn’t realised until now. “.. . I wanted a picture of you.”

Snape turned slowly to look him in the face.

“Of me? Why?”

Oh God, don’t make me spell it out. Don’t make me say it.

“Dunno, Sir.”

They were both embarrassed now. For once it was Snape who came to the rescue.

“From the crest of that hill one gets a view of Snape Manor, the river and the rest of the estate. Stand still, Potter.”

Harry tensed, assuming that Braque had returned for dessert. But there was no icy, darting tongue. Placing his fingers lightly on Harry’s head, Snape murmured the incantation ‘Repello morsum’.

“That will repel most biting creatures. There are numerous poisonous species out here, spiders, snakes, insects and so forth. The frogs are the worst, be wary of sematic pigmentation.”

He strode off through the long grass and Harry followed unhappily, his eyes searching for flashes of bright colour amidst the stalks.

“You’re really into all these poisonous things, aren’t you, Sir?” Harry hoped that a neutral subject might ease them towards his list of questions.

“My speciality is not, as you once so rightly pointed out, ‘Childcare’,” Snape replied, “but poisons.”

Go for the jugular, why don’t you? Harry had not been sure at the time that Snape had even heard his sarcastic comment. Were they heading straight for another fight? But the Professor continued, reasonably,

“Poisons and their antidotes. More specifically, poisonous organic compounds that can be extracted from natural sources - plants and animals. Some of them are exquisitely deadly. Magical poisons pale by comparison. Mycology alone yields fascinating insights into the nature of toxicity…” Then, observing Harry’s glazed expression, he exclaimed irritably, “Merlin’s beard! Hasn’t Sprout imparted the bare basics of botanical classification? Think, Potter, Mycology? Fungology? Or must I still refer to it as the study of mushrooms and toadstools, as though you were a first year student?

“As for the animals, I keep some species in my laboratory for the purposes of experimentation; the others live out here until required. If you are interested, I can demonstrate how to milk a Valera Viper - its fangs, you know, can grow up to two inches long….”

They had reached a high plateau near the top of the hill. In the valley below them and to their right was an imposing, Elizabethan brick and timber building - Snape Manor. It stood three stories tall, with mullioned windows and multiple gables. A round tower, made of stone and with a conical slate roof adjoined the east wing - it looked as though it dated from an earlier period. The formal gardens were largely overgrown - Harry could see a topiary avenue, now sprouting raggedly, the circular indentations of choked, weed-clogged lily ponds and terraces leading to parkland, pasture and trees. The low, languid curve of the river stretched across the fields and curled itself around the woods like a cat’s tail. In front of the house there was a cobblestone courtyard and a long driveway sweeping away to a set of distant gates. Harry was reminded of the other wrought-iron gate with its twisting initials.

“What was the name of the village again, Sir? Snape Somewhere?”

“Snape Delaford. It’s over in that direction, beyond those trees. About a mile and a half. The river used to be fordable there at one time.” Snape pointed.

“So did the Snape family control Delaford, or own it? Did they rename the whole village after themselves?” Harry asked. Get the arrogance of some of these old wizard families!

Harry’s innocent question had unwittingly touched a nerve.

“Sheer ignorance! Ignorance and folly! No respect for a beautiful language!” Snape muttered, with sudden feeling.

“What?” Where did that come from? Did he say ‘beautiful’?

“Hundreds of years ago,” Snape continued in a more carefully considered, explanatory tone, “the people in this part of the country were an uneducated, ignorant lot. They had little understanding of, or appreciation for, foreign words and customs. Such sophistications were beyond their experience.

“Because of its proximity to the coast - the sea is about five miles due south of here - there is a strong maritime influence in this area. Many Muggle settlers from across the channel travelled inland from the ports. At one time the French community was particularly influential. That is reflected in the etymology of some of the place names round here, such as Maisonfield or Champsea. Are you paying attention, Potter?”

Harry had managed to keep up with Snape’s linguistic lecture so far, but he hoped he wasn’t going to get too technical. The man was full of surprises: Harry would never have had him down as a Francophile; or was he just a complete and utter pedant - simply couldn’t help himself.

Snape looked back over his shoulder in the direction they had come, but the October afternoon was closing in and mist was already gathering in the valleys.

“The view is obstructed at the moment. Anyway,” he went on, “over the years, some names changed almost beyond recognition. Either they Anglicised the pronunciation to suit their pathetic parlance, transposed letters - examples of portmanteau and metathesis abound - or else they substituted a commonplace word to replace the less familiar French one. Sloppy, illiterate bastardisation of the language!”

Harry listened in silence, not knowing what to make of this man - the deep, unseen currents of thought, the unexpected, perplexing swirls and eddies of complex emotion.

“Buderton!” Snape exclaimed animatedly. “Any idea what that name comes from? No? ‘Boue de sang’ - mud of blood. From the red colour of the soil round here. And the name of the fishing village, Summerport, is derived from ‘sombre’ and ‘port’, the treacherous, ‘dark’ harbour where the French ships traditionally docked. And, similarly, Delaford is a corruption of Delacour.”

“Delacour?” Harry prompted.

“An old French wizard dynasty. Snape Delacour was founded and named to celebrate the union of two powerful Pureblood families. The river crossing I mentioned was for years known as ‘Delacour’s ford’, but the locals were too moronic and too lazy to say the words. With custom and usage the name became shortened to Delaford. The family connection still exists: over the years the two Houses have perpetuated the link through advantageous marriage alliances.” He paused briefly, then added, almost as an aside, “Delacour was my mother’s family name.”

Delacour? Harry knew he had heard that name somewhere before, in a completely different context. A vision of the long, blond hair and hypnotic beauty of Bill Weasley’s ex-girlfriend, Fleur Delacour, glided into his mind and, without thinking, he blurted out,

“Are you saying your mother was a Veela?”

Startled by the audacity of the lateral leap in Harry’s train of thought, Snape’s face registered shock. Then he blushed. It was worth it for that moment alone. A denial hovered on his lips, but it was too late.

“Astute, Potter. Very astute,” he muttered. Abruptly turning his back on Harry, he climbed the remaining yards to the very brow of the hill to confront his past alone, and stood there, braced against the wind, a bleak and solitary figure.

He stayed up there a long time. Harry, watching him, was unable even to guess at the conflicts raging within that tightly-reined exterior.

There was a damp chill in the air now, and Harry was getting cold. He finally went up and touched Snape on the sleeve,

“Can we keep walking, Sir? I’m freezing up here in this wind. It can’t be doing you any good either.”

Snape's hacking cough had been plaguing him all afternoon.

For a while they walked down in uneasy silence. Snape’s explanation, when it came, was well-rehearsed and impersonal:

“The Veela link to my mother’s branch of the family was remote. It did - does - nonetheless exist.”

“But, - and I’m honestly not trying to be rude, Sir, - I didn’t think Veela would be allowed in Pureblood families. Or have I got it all wrong?”

If anyone had asked Harry to predict how this conversation would go, he would have said, fatalistically: denial, outrage, rebuke, punishment. He definitely expected to end up in pretty serious trouble for daring to mention Snape’s family in the same breath as a Veela. But Snape seemed to be having enough trouble of his own, wrestling with his conscience, without having to cope with Harry’s concerns too.

“Customs change, Potter. Different nationalities have different ways of looking at these things. In 18th Century France to have Veela blood in the family was considered an honour.”

“And now, in this country?”

“It is - not - an - honour.” Snape got the words out with difficulty.

Harry surveyed him critically.

“Can’t you take a Potion for that cough, Sir? You’re not getting any better.”

Irrationally, he felt irritated with Snape for not bothering to take care of himself.

“Take a Potion! That’s everybody’s answer for everything, these days!” said Snape bitterly.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I just thought…”

“Well, don’t. Don’t think. Don’t tell me to take Potions. Potions have blighted my life.”

Harry sensed they were on the brink of a seismic shift in their relationship. But as the first shockwaves hit, he instinctively retreated into a defensive shelter of facetiousness. A callous quip about ‘Teaching Potions not being all that bad’ was dancing on his tongue. Don’t blow this. If you make some silly wise-crack now, just because you’re nervous, he’ll lock up like a Gringott’s vault. Please don’t say anything crass.

“Sir?”

“Potter…” In just one word Harry could hear Snape’s resolve struggling against a baying mob of doubt and uncertainty. Yet, against his better judgement, Snape had finally decided to trust him.

“I do not wish ill-informed rumours about my family to become fodder for prurient gossip-mongers. Professor Dumbledore has already ‘suggested’ that I provide you with some details about the Snape family. It was inevitable that these subjects would be raised at some point. Very well. Given that you have intuited certain facts, I am obliged to put them in context. Now would seem to be an appropriate moment.

“What I am about to tell you, Potter, is for your information only. It is not to be repeated. It is not for the entertainment of your classmates in the Gryffindor common-room. It is not even for the sympathetic ears of Miss Granger. Is that understood?”

His usual hectoring authority had been replaced by a tone altogether less self-assured. This was as much a request as an order.

“Of course, Sir.”

“You may not like what I am going to say, Potter. It may not be what you want to hear. It almost certainly will not be.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I know your questions primarily concern your parents. I will endeavour to answer them. In doing so I will have to refer to my own family - bear with me, Potter, there is a connection. Potter? - ”

Snape was looking at Harry with a grave intensity.

“Sir?”

“You may wish to return to Hogwarts after… …afterwards. You can Floo there directly from the cottage.”

“I’m sure that won’t be…” Harry tried to sound confident and positive, but his stomach was knotted with dread. He could well believe that Snape’s version of events would be unpalatable.

“No rash judgements until you are apprised of the facts, Potter,” Snape warned. Having got thus far he was now loath to begin. Harry had never seen him so diffident.

Evening was drawing down its grey blinds and a thick mist was tucking in the valleys for the night. Harry and Snape walked side by side. As if by mutual consent, they turned away from the path that led back to the cottage. The walking gave them an outlet for their tension; the darkness veiled their pain.

“I went to the Manor this morning because…” Snape started, then tailed off. “No, I must start further back. My mother, as you so accurately deduced, had Veela ancestors. It was not something our family wanted to publicise. The power was all but dormant in her branch of the family - none of the female offspring had manifested those attributes for generations. There was certainly nothing deemed significant enough to prevent my parents’ marriage. But my mother… She had a certain mesmeric quality. It was the Veela blood coming out in her. The Muggles have a term for it - a ‘recessive gene’, I believe. She was considered attractive, even provocative… It began to cause trouble, arouse suspicions… There were a lot of… ..arguments.”

The flat understatement spoke more poignantly to Harry about Snape’s home life than any graphic description. Minimising pain was something he could relate to. He knew what he had seen in the Pensieve. The Professor continued softly,

“I was always fascinated by Potions, even as a child. Their subtlety, their infinite variety. I started brewing when I was, oh, quite young. My father insisted that I prepare a special Potion for my mother. It suppressed the Veela in her. It also prevented her from performing magic - an unfortunate side-effect, but one which proved advantageous. The Potion enabled her to live a relatively normal life without all the problems and repercussions caused by the somewhat ‘tantalising’ nature of the Veela aura.

“But in time she became addicted to the Potion. Ultimately, it led to her death. Her death, and, indirectly, that of my father too.”

He rushed the last few sentences, turning his face away from Harry and breathing deeply.

Harry waited, wanting details now, but Snape was pursuing a new train of thought.

“You know, obviously, that I am - that I was - a Death Eater? You have seen the Mark?”

Harry shuddered at the memory of Snape’s blistered arm that day in the cellar, burning from within as the black ‘Skull and Snake’ seared through the flesh. Snape too was rubbing his forearm - maybe subconsciously, or maybe it still hurt. But he did not intend to dwell on that now.

“That photograph you found, Potter… It was taken not long after I left Hogwarts, when I had recently joined the Dark Lord. I was one of his newest recruits.” A defensive edge had cut into his voice.

“I am going to tell you this, Potter, though it shames me to do so. It is not a topic I would usually discuss, but, given your situation, you do have a right to know. The very memory is abhorrent to me now. The first thing you have to understand is that I joined the Dark Lord of my own volition. I was not coerced or bribed. It was my own free choice; I am not proud of it. It is a decision I have long regretted.”

He paused for a few moments, struggling to regulate the surge of unstoppered truths pouring into his mind, a Canute before a tide of confession. When he next spoke, the pompous, professorial barrage had been raised again to dam the flow.

“In retrospect, I can identify certain factors which led me to that choice, not that I wish to plead mitigating circumstances - one must take responsibility for one’s own actions.”

The temptation to digress into a debate on ethics and moral abstracts was seductive. Harry could tell that it went against Snape’s every instinct for self-preservation to discuss his personal life, and that he was finding this conversation unbelievably stressful. To Harry it was unimaginable that the tight-lipped, guarded Professor should have relaxed his defences so far. Dumbledore had been right: Snape was still not quite himself.

“You will have gathered that my home life at that time was far from ideal. It was…” and here Snape’s perfect self-control slipped a notch, “…it was unacceptable, Potter. Intolerable. My mother’s addiction was taking over all our lives. Her behaviour had been unpredictable and erratic for as long as I can remember - in my youth it was something of a joke that my father had been bewitched by an eccentric French siren. But later it became impossible.

“I spent weeks - months - reformulating the Potions, attempting to stabilise a less addictive alternative, but none was adequately effective; none was therapeutic. I didn’t have the experience, then. For Merlin’s sake, I’d only just finished my NEWTs! Neither was it practical to wean her off the Potion - the withdrawal symptoms were terrible: the moods, the depression. She could be violent sometimes, frightening…”

Again he paused, his jaw clenched, fighting back cruel memories.

“At that stage in my life, Potter, I had come to regard my family as a liability. I was young and bright and ambitious… I certainly didn’t envisage becoming a teacher for the rest of my life, I can tell you! I had an entreé into an influential milieu - Malfoy had adopted me as a kind of protégé - the last thing I needed right then was rumours of a deficient, less than Pureblood parent ruining my prospects. I couldn’t wait to get out.”

“What about your father? Didn’t he…?” Harry didn’t even finish the question before Snape slapped him down.

“My father? I have no wish to discuss my father! He was, how shall I put it, ‘unsupportive’…

“The thought of remaining at Snape Manor and being ‘groomed’ to take over the running of the estate, with possibly a little light Potions brewing on the side as an unofficial pass-time… and all the while maintaining the pretence that my mother’s - what shall I call it? - ‘unconventional’ behaviour was just some coquettish, continental quirk… it was stifling, Potter. There had to be something more; it was imperative that I should leave.

“And the Dark Lord offered an escape. In the beginning he was charismatic - he was full of confidence and enthusiasm for his cause, impassioned, dynamic. To hear him speak was stirring, infectious -”

“But couldn’t you see him for what he really was - just a power-hungry, unprincipled, crypto-fascist monster?” Harry protested angrily, outrage displacing his curiosity. Snape recoiled before the vehemence of Harry’s objection.

“His rhetoric had an enormous appeal - can you understand that at all, Potter? I was idealistic enough and desperate enough to swallow the idea that his philosophy promised some kind of a future - the purification, the ‘salvation’ of wizardry. We were going to save the Pureblood ‘houses’ from contamination.

“I know that sounds hypocritical after what I’ve just told you about my mother, but I was trying to distance myself from that side of my life. None of my associates knew, or even suspected. Had they found out I would have been ostracised; we might even have become targets ourselves. I know that, on the scale of half-breeds, there are worse things than Veela, but the Dark Lord was not exactly renowned for his tolerance.”

“But he of all people should have known what it was like…” argued Harry, thinking of Tom Riddle’s own background.

“The fanaticism of a convert is matched only by the zealotry of someone concealing a shameful secret,” replied Snape tersely.

“At the beginning it was like a noble Crusade - we didn’t analyse the methods we would have to use to achieve our ends. We didn’t realise we were embarking on Mudblood genocide - and by the time we did, we no longer cared.”

“You didn’t care? Not care about all the killing? How can you say that?”

“What was the Dark Lord supposed to do, Potter? Go round on a campaign bus, entertaining student rallies with a folk guitar and visiting baby clinics? Be realistic! Those were troubled times; we had to win by any means - and if there was a whiff of sulphur in the air… well…

“It must seem to you as though I am trying to justify the conduct of the Dark Lord. There may be an element of that - I have to believe that I had some valid reasons for joining him, otherwise I would begin to doubt my own sanity.

“At the time, the Dark Lord represented an alternative to the inertia and stagnation of my life. His regime was not - or so I then thought - evil, degenerate and morally corrupt. His followers had an inflated image of themselves as the upholders of traditional wizard values, protecting our heritage - defending all those same traditions that I was so anxious to disown. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Snape was becoming increasingly agitated. He began to quicken his pace as he walked, his cloak billowing behind him in the wind, like the black, unfurled sails of a pirate schooner. Harry was hard-pressed to keep up with him on the unfamiliar paths, lit only by stars, faint and diffused by misty darkness.

“As Death Eaters we were wild, Potter. As time went on we became uncontrollable. Most of us were young and bold and arrogant. We were thrill-seekers, hungry for excitement, ready to take almost any risk, just for the sheer hell of it. The whole thing was one big adventure.

“There were initiation tests too - insane, dangerous ordeals like the dragon-riding in the photograph. Merlin! I must have been mad to ride that beast! We would egg each other on to perform ever more extreme feats of daring, such as Freefall Broomstick Flying, or Potion Roulette. Once you embrace the Dark there are no limits: the sense of liberation is intoxicating! It was a select, anarchic club - and for the first time in my life I felt I truly belonged.

“And the women… I’m sorry, Potter, but the women were just another depraved, senseless game. There was no grand plan there. It was all about ego and bravado and impressing our peers.

“ We all had our own warped agenda too - in our own ways we were all searching for power or status or affirmation of some sort. Think about it, Potter, - what greater power is there, than that of Life or Death? Mors ultima ratio. It is exhilarating! You have experienced at first hand the thrill of inflicting pain - you can’t deny it. That in itself becomes an addiction. …the buzz you get from casting an Unforgivable - and with each Curse the corruption eats a little deeper into your soul. The raids and the torture and destruction became an end in themselves.

“After a while it became apparent to me - and possibly to some of the others, though we never openly acknowledged it - that the situation was getting out of hand. The raids were escalating, the violence unwarranted, often gratuitous. The Dark Lord was growing fanatical - even his most loyal followers could see that. But by then we were all too deeply involved: we had no choice but to support the Death Eaters or spend the rest of our lives in Azkaban.

“We used to psyche ourselves up for the raids, drinking and … how shall I put it? Let us just say that my services were in great demand to supply ‘recreational potions’. Sometimes when we went on a raid we were so high we hardly knew what we were doing…”

Snape was addressing the darkness, unable to meet the disgust and disillusion in Harry’s eyes.

“One day I was at the Manor, when I was summoned by the Mark. You know how that feels, Potter - isn’t it the same with your scar - when it burns so badly that all you can concentrate on is the pain..? I was in my laboratory working on a potion when the summons came. I Apparated at once to the Dark Lord’s side. He was planning another raid - Mudblood witches were to be the targets. I read your mother’s name on the list. The fact that I had known her at school was an irrelevance. All I could think of was that attacking your mother was a perfect way to get back at James Potter.

“You were correct that day in the cellar - she was, then, ‘just another Mudblood witch.’”

Harry felt repulsed and sickened. He spoke coldly:

“Why didn’t you tell me this in the cellar?”

“Would you have listened? You were far too angry then Potter. You would not have been able to handle it. I’m not sure if I could. The time in the cellar was all about you, Potter. This is about me.”

Harry tried to digest what the Professor had said. It was true - had he learned all this in the cellar, he would have executed Snape without compunction. As it was, it had been a borderline decision to Apparate with him to safety.

“But what had my mother ever done to you?” he cried.

“Nothing. Nothing at all, except marry James.”

“But you said that you and she weren’t… weren’t… So what did it matter to you who she married?”

“It mattered because I hated James Potter,” Snape answered icily.

“But WHY?”

“At Hogwarts we…” Snape began to reply, but Harry interrupted him unceremoniously.

“Yeah, I know. You had this feud thing going. But everybody gets teased or bullied at school. It doesn’t mean you go around bearing a grudge against them for ever and raping their wives!”

“Indeed. But James took bullying to unacceptable extremes. I was severely provoked. In the normal course of events I would not have involved your mother. The opportunity presented itself; I took advantage of it.”

“Just tell me what he could have possibly done that was so bad. Was it all about that argument over Sirius and Remus - er, Professor Lupin?” Harry demanded, his sympathies now totally alienated. Snape looked abashed; he hedged,

“It may not seem so serious to you…”

“Just tell me!”

Snape took a deep breath, then coughed, the damp air catching his lungs. He clearly regretted ever embarking on this conversation. At last he spoke reluctantly,

“It was in our fifth year. James stole a phial of Veritaserum and tricked me into taking it. He got Lily to give it to me in a drink. For years I thought she had been an accomplice, but I have since changed my mind. I don’t actually think she knew anything about it. He used her just as he used everybody else.

“Then he asked me questions. About everything. He interrogated me about absolutely everything. He asked about my family, my hopes, my ambitions, my worst fears, my secret fantasies - all my most private thoughts, Potter. Things I could never divulge to anyone. Things I had spent my whole life trying to conceal. He violated them, sneered at them. He derided my family…”

“And did he blackmail you?”

Harry was appalled. To a person like Snape, James’ behaviour was tantamount to assault.

“Not financially, no. What did money matter to someone like Potter? But it gave him a hold over me, that he could exploit any time he wanted. It made my position at school quite untenable. It had been bad enough before - I had never been the most… ..gregarious of students. Being brought up on my own at Snape Manor, I was accustomed to my own company; I found it difficult to break my solitary habits. I had no ‘confidant’. James was always so popular, and I was an isolated, ivory tower intellectual.

“Lily, I think, understood to some extent. I don’t know how much James told her, but he must have let a few details slip - she asked my advice a couple of times when she was working on the French module in Muggle Studies. But she was too wrapped up in Potter to take much notice of me.

“And to him it was just a prank. If he ever cornered me alone, he would taunt me with his knowledge, defying me to retaliate. That was how the feud started – as James’ sick joke; it escalated from there. Later there was all that business with Black and the Shrieking Shack, and it ceased to be humorous - it was a lot more serious. Potter never missed a chance to rub it in: he always made a point of referring to my mother in the most offensive terms - ‘Potion-head’ or ‘the exotic erotic’. On the day before the Death Eater raid I had encountered him in Diagon Alley and he had the blatant effrontery to ask after my mother’s health - and then he winked. The idiot winked at me.”

Snape was clearly upset. He ran his hand through his hair, pushing the damp strands away from his face, his fingers massaging his temples. Harry would never have dreamed that he would hear Snape speak so frankly, or in such personal terms. He viewed him uncertainly, not knowing whether to say anything, the loathing he had felt only moments ago now receding before Snape’s evident distress. Snape sighed and resumed his account,

“It was shortly before the raids were due to begin… I remembered that, in my haste to answer the Dark Lord’s summons, I had failed to re-set the protective passwords on my laboratory. I Apparated back to the Manor at once, but it was already too late. My mother had gained access. She had taken a lethal combination of potions - overdosed on them. For a short time she experienced a massive resurgence of her magical powers. It was all too much. She became deranged and used the Death Curse on my father. Then she turned it on herself. She was dead by the time I arrived home. They both were. Both lying on the floor in the banqueting hall. There was nothing I could do.”

“So what did you do?”

“Apparated straight back to take part in the raid. I had no choice. The Dark Lord expected total loyalty and commitment. One’s personal feelings came second to the glorious Cause.

“It seemed as though Fate were playing into my hands when I was one of the two Death Eaters allocated to Godric’s Hollow. I had to find some outlet for my grief - James presented himself as an ideal target. It was lucky that he was out at the time of the raid. Had he been there I should undoubtedly have killed him, ‘blood bond’ or not.”

That was one wizard custom Harry did know about: the debt of loyalty owed by one wizard to another who had saved his life. James had, at the last minute, prevented Snape from entering the Shrieking Shack; Snape, much as he hated it, had been indebted to him.

Snape continued bitterly,

“You can’t expect me to go into the details of what happened next - use your imagination. But it wasn’t a question of pleasure. I will not lie to you, Potter, or make excuses. It was a brutal, sordid business; it was bestial, demeaning for everyone involved. I hardly knew what I was doing - …not at my most rational…”

Snape’s narrative deteriorated into a series of ungrammatical phrases; he seemed to be talking to himself:

“…couldn’t tell anyone. …should have been more careful. …done something to prevent it… should never have left them …no passwords…”

Then, grasping at a lingering shred of objectivity,

“I was so angry, Potter. Angry with myself, with my parents, with James, with the whole god-forsaken world. I was impelled to retaliate. It was nothing to do with Lily, she was the victim in all this. I just knew that by abusing her I would be inflicting an even deeper wound on James’ male pride. It all comes down to pride. Such things were important to James. But really, the fact that I was there, and not at the house of some other witch, was co-incidental. I did not deliberately set out to hurt your mother.”

“What was the point?” Harry asked fiercely. “Why do it to them at all? What did you achieve? What had that got to do with your ‘noble Cause’?”

“No point. There was no point. It was pure, senseless intimidation. An exercise of power, wanton cruelty, debauchery, sadism - call it what you will. Another notch on a Death Eater’s wand. I’m not proud of it.

“I have lived with the spectres of that day for over sixteen years,” Snape ended very quietly, an admission of anguish whispered to the wind.

The poles of sympathy and censure tempered Harry’s heart:

“And you expect me to feel sorry for you?”

“I expect nothing from anyone. Nothing at all.”

And he walked off into the night, leaving Harry alone.

Without waiting to see if Snape would reappear, Harry retraced his steps, sticking religiously to the path until he came within sight of the cottage. He had a horrible suspicion that the most poisonous creatures were nocturnal. The mist settled on him like a fine, cold rain.

The door yielded to a vicious kick - damn this crap about no magic! A quick ‘Alohomora’ would have hurt his toe less. In his room he could have done with the ‘Packing’ spell that Tonks had once shown him. It would have saved a lot of time. Angrily he began to fold and assemble his possessions and shove them into his trunk. Snape had been right about one thing - he did want to leave. He’d Floo back to Hogwarts immediately, before Snape returned. To hell with Snape. To hell with Dumbledore and his good-natured meddling.

There was one more thing Harry needed. Hurrying downstairs, he went to the bookcase to retrieve his mother’s poetry book. He didn’t see why Snape should have it.

When Snape decided to spill the beans, he didn’t mess about, did he? Well, Harry had asked for it. He’d wanted to know about his mother and now he did. Snape had been painfully honest. Once the floodgates were open, there’d been no stopping him. So his childhood had been shit too - join the Club! Anyway, Harry knew now. He knew and he could move on, draw a line under this episode in his life. He didn’t need to see Snape again, ever. He wanted to dissociate himself from anything to do with his so-called ‘father’ and his vicious, lewd, murderous past. He’d go back to Hogwarts, talk to Dumbledore, tell him that the ‘reconciliation’ with Snape had been a complete, bloody fiasco, and that he wanted to change schools as soon as possible. If Dumbledore thought he was shirking his responsibilities, that was tough. He could transfer to another wizard school to finish his NEWTs - somewhere like Beauxbatons. Why had he said that, and not Durmstrang? All this French business was getting to him!

The book in his hands felt strangely warm and heavy. He gazed at the uninspiring, taupe-grey dust-cover, it’s thick, coarse paper tattered at the edges. ‘An Anthology of Modern French Poetry - From Baudelaire to the Present Day’ : the title was in plain capitals, a royal blue. Third edition. Harry opened the cover and gently traced his fingers over the pencilled name, Lily Evans. The book stirred. The pages began to flip purposefully, searching for a certain place. Harry smiled: his mother must have used a ‘mark your favourite pages’ Charm. Now he’d find out her favourite poem!

He perched in the chair by the fire - the same one as the previous evening - and waited for the book to settle. Finally it came to rest and lay open at some verses by Rimbaud. Five lines highlighted themselves, claiming his attention:

‘Qu’est-ce pour nous, mon coeur, que les nappes de sang…’

Oh, Merlin! thought Harry, scrabbling through the first line without making much sense of it. I’m going to need help translating this. He dredged in his memory for an appropriate spell.

“Lingua Anglica reddo!” It can’t have been quite the right spell for the words on the page before him remained resolutely French. But, as he read them again, he found that the meaning was forming in his mind; he didn’t have an exact translation, but he understood.

‘Qu’est-ce pour nous, mon coeur, que les nappes de sang,

Et de braise et mille meurtres, et les longs cris

De rage, sanglots de tout enfer renversant

Tout ordre; et l’Aquilon encor sur les debris;

Et toute vengeance? Rien!...’

‘What does it all mean to us, my heart - the sheets of blood and ash, and a thousand killings, the long frenzied shrieks, the sobs of every hell overturning all order, and the North wind still above the ruins, and each revenge…? What does it mean? Nothing!...’

Harry skimmed through the rest of the poem; other lines stood out as his eyes ran over them:

‘Tout à la guerre, à la vengeance, à la terreur…’ (‘Everything for war, vengeance, terror..')

Harry almost dropped the book in disgust. That had to be Snape’s favourite, not Lily’s. It was virtually a Death Eater battle-song. He probably chanted it to himself before a raid to get in the mood.

The little volume quivered and the pages began turning again, more quickly this time, taking Harry to ‘Correspondances’ by Baudelaire. The words engulfed him in a rich, full-bodied glow like a draught of vintage red wine:

‘Il est des parfums …

… d’autres corrompus, riches and triomphants,

Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,

Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens,

Qui chantent les transports de’l’esprit et des sens.’

‘There are other perfumes, corrupt, rich and triumphant; they expand into infinity like amber, musk, benzoin and incense, singing the raptures of the mind and senses.’

That poem had to have been chosen and marked by Snape. Was that how he felt about his potions? How could he when he hated potions so vehemently? How could he bear to teach Potions? He wouldn’t take them himself, but he’d give them to other people? Why was everything about Snape so contradictory and irreconcilable? There was something too physical, too sensuous about these verses - the thought of Snape reading them made Harry uncomfortable.

Another, well-thumbed page fell open:

‘J’ai revé tellement fort de toi…’ (‘I have dreamed so intensely of you…’).

“Oh God!” exclaimed Harry, shutting the book suddenly. He couldn’t bear to read any more. This was like prying into Snape’s secret journals. It was as bad as James and the Veritaserum. The image of Snape sitting here by his fire, alone, reading these words of passion and longing and despair, was absurd, laughable. But Harry wasn’t laughing. He felt very sad.

He got up and walked to the window, peering out into the blackness. He couldn’t see anything. He wondered where Snape was, where he had gone, whether he was coming back. He might have Apparated anywhere - Hogwarts, London, Paris… he might have thrown himself into the lake… he might be waiting on the doorstep… Harry ran and flung open the front door, but there was no one there.

‘Quig might know where he goes. I’ll see if I can get him. Maybe ask for something to eat at the same time. Doesn’t Snape ever bother with meals?’ Harry took a pinch of the black sand and flicked it into the fire as he had seen the Professor do. Then he waited. But there were no slapping footsteps; the elf was not at home either. Harry went into the kitchen to fend for himself. Then he went upstairs to unpack. He had to face it - he wasn’t going anywhere.

Returning to the sitting room, he sat in Snape’s arm-chair, the poetry book on his knees. It held a voyeuristic fascination for him. He felt he detested everything about the man and yet… he wanted another glimpse into the world of this other Snape, the darkly romantic, tortured soul. It was aeons away from the man he had thought he knew, whose pleasures in life centred around belittling the brewing skills of his students and eviscerating small rodents. But the book remained unopened on his lap.

Dumbledore had said that he and Snape were alike, that they had a lot in common. After today Harry could see the parallels only too clearly; he could recognise the similarities in their lives – their unhappiness and isolation and, less forgivably, the force of their latent anger and aggression. He realised the extent of the restraint Snape had shown in the cellar, forbearance even, under conditions that would have provoked far milder men.

Harry’s opinion of James had sunken into the abyss. A bolt of retrospective alarm shot through him as he realised that he and Draco could have been in exactly the same situation. Except that he, gullible, naïve Harry, had presented himself to Malfoy on a plate. It said a lot for the Slytherin that he had kept, more or less, to their bargain. Snape had always seemed to have some regard for Draco, but Harry had assumed that was a part of his Death Eater façade. Perhaps he had seen some quality - honour among Purebloods? – that Harry had, until recently, missed.

Harry checked the time. He had been back over two hours. Where was Snape? He peered outside again, but the darkness was as impenetrable as ever; he discovered he was pacing the room, growing uneasy. Once more he picked up the poetry book and curled up in the chair, his father’s chair.

‘Le front aux vitres comme les veilleurs de chagrin…’

(‘My forehead rests against the window pain like someone whose sorrow allows him no sleep…’).

Oh, Merlin! This is heart-breaking stuff. I really can’t read this. The pain and loneliness behind the words choked him.

‘Si tu savais…’ (‘If only you knew…’). Who? If who knew?

Harry allowed the firelight and warmth to lull him into a doze. He could feel himself slipping into sleep and he welcomed the release it offered from his fruitless analysis of the day’s conversation. He floated into the security of a familiar dream: his family - he and his parents. As dreams go, it was always uneventful - no one ever seemed to do anything very much, they were just there, James and Lily, a comforting, dependable presence. Only this time, it wasn’t James in the dream, it was Snape standing in that soft-focus twilight REM zone, with his arm around Lily’s waist…

Harry didn’t want to wake up. Languidly checking the time again he found, to his astonishment, that he had been asleep for nearly three hours. It was getting late. His first thought was that Snape must have come in and not wanted to wake him.

“Sir?” he shouted, “Are you there?”

But the house was silent and empty. In spite of himself, Harry was starting to get anxious. He felt uniquely responsible for this tempestuous, highly-strung man with his explosive moods, his dark insights and penetrating intellect.

It was nearly midnight when the door catch clicked softly and Snape came in. Harry leaped to his feet in relief.

“What time do you call this?” he yelled at Snape, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Still here, Potter? I thought you would have been long gone.” Snape stood in the doorway, unfastening his dripping cloak with chilled fingers. Harry turned on him:

“Is that what you were doing all this time? Keeping out of the way so you wouldn’t have to face me? I didn’t think you were a coward too.”

“I prefer to see it as giving you the opportunity to avoid a further unpleasant confrontation. Look, Potter, if you’ve got something to say to me, say it. If not, just leave. I’m too tired to argue.”

He moved across to the dying embers of the fire to get warm. Harry, engulfed by a sudden tide of emotion, felt shipwrecked; he floundered and struck out:

“How could I go? When I didn’t know where you were, or if you were ever going to come back? Or if you were alright? You’ve been gone for hours! You’ve been out there all this time and you’re cold and wet and now you’ll get sick again and that’ll be all my fault too… You tell me, How could I go?”

Snape looked at him in surprise.

“I’m alright, Potter.” He sank into his chair in exhaustion, adding wearily, “I will take a Potion if you wish it.”

Harry appreciated that Snape had just made a major concession. Without being asked he opened a new bottle and poured him a Firewhisky. Snape, bending forward to unlace his saturated boots, glanced up at Harry,

“Leave the bottle, Potter. I intend to get extremely drunk…”

Even Quig couldn’t ruin a Continental breakfast. Or so Harry thought, until he bit into the warm croissant: it didn’t taste too bad, but it was the consistency of raw chicken and smelled suspiciously of burned feathers. However, there didn’t appear to be anything else, so Harry held his nose and kept his chewing to a minimum. He wasn’t a fussy eater. It was only afterwards that the worrying ideas laid siege: what if Quig had transfigured the croissant from a dead bird? What if he put mushrooms in his marmalade?

Harry decided that having a supply of Emergency Emetic Antidote would, after all, be a wise precaution.

The walled herb garden of Snape Cottage was a botanists’ dream. Plants from all corners of the globe were growing there, separated into four main sections - culinary, medicinal, decorative/aromatic, and poisonous - with subdivisions within each bed for genus and species and specialist micro-climates, all clearly labelled and with not a weed in sight.

Harry strolled round the borders, gathering the fresh medicinal leaves he needed for the recipes he was planning to make. Professor Sprout could take a few lessons from this, he thought, mentally comparing this model of horticultural efficiency with the chaotic, jungle profusion of the Hogwarts’ greenhouse.

Treading softly, Harry sneaked down to Snape’s basement laboratory. He wished he had Sirius’s knife with him - if only its blade hadn’t disintegrated like melting cheese when he was trying to unlock that damned door in the Department of Mysteries. Sirius. Everything Harry did seemed to bring him back to Sirius. He had hardly known the man, really, and yet he still felt that they were inextricably, eternally linked. From that first day in the Shrieking Shack, Harry had known that he could ‘connect’ with Sirius. Whatever a soul-mate was - and Harry wasn’t sure; it had always seemed rather a girly concept - he thought Sirius must be the nearest he would ever get to one. Somehow he had always been able to talk to Sirius, tell him things, without worrying about being corrected or belittled. With Snape it was so different: Harry always felt he had to be careful about what he was saying - the content, the phraseology, the grammar even. Snape was so quick to criticise, so ready to take offence or assume malicious intent, so sensitive and defensive. A conversation with him, on anything but the most innocuous of subjects, was fraught with pitfalls; the emotional stakes were too high. Whereas Sirius had been a friend, more like one of the lads than a mentor. Had been… Harry brought himself up short, acknowledging the past tense. This reverie was getting him nowhere, certainly not through the locked door to the laboratory.

He looked around hopefully for a key, not expecting to find anything so pedestrian. No, Snape would not make the same mistake twice in one lifetime. Again Harry bemoaned the lack of his wand… One simple ‘Alohomora’ would have done it. It was so easy, he reflected, to get carried away with the excitement of high-powered, NEWT level magic when, really, some of the basic spells they had learned in the first year were the most useful. But, wait a minute, Snape had had his hands full of biting weasels when he had come down to the basement; he couldn’t have used a wand either. Harry racked his brains, trying to remember the verbal opening spell he had heard him utter.

“Open! Open up! Open the door! Aperio! Aperioportum!” The door didn’t budge.

“Alohomora!” He tried the spell anyway, without a wand, but nothing happened. Then, on a hunch, he changed languages:

“Ouvrez! Ouvrez la porte!”

The door scraped ajar. Harry closed it quietly behind him. He was deliberately breaking one of Snape’s primary house rules - it felt rebellious and risqué, but Harry wanted to establish a few ground rules of his own, one of them being that he was old enough and responsible enough to find his way around a Potions lab without killing himself in the process.

He worked conscientiously all morning, carefully following the recipes in ‘Herbal Heroes’ and ‘A Passion for Potions’, checking and re-checking the ingredients, quantities and precise methods until he was confident that everything was perfect. By the end of the morning he had prepared three phials of freshly brewed Potions, and he felt justly proud of himself. The Emetic Antidote was a little cloudy, but he hoped it would settle out.

The second potion had required long and regular stirring. Once Harry got into the rhythm he had found it pleasantly relaxing, therapeutic even - he had almost stirred himself into a trance. It gave him a chance to think, to try to work out where, exactly, the previous evening had gone so disastrously wrong. One minute Snape had been offering to betray his principles and take a Potion, go against the habits of a lifetime, for Harry’s sake, to reassure him - or so it had seemed to Harry - and the next moment he had switched to ‘self-destruct’ and was hitting the Firewhisky.

Remonstrating with him had only made things worse. Finally Harry had given up in exasperation, retreating upstairs miserably, shocked to find himself a trespasser in Snape’s private hell.

Harry had slept fitfully, waking at the slightest noise. He heard Snape’s tread on the stairs, heard his movements through the wall as he prepared for bed, his racking bouts of coughing, then silence… Harry woke again, some time later, as a sharp squall of rain smacked the window panes. He lay listening to the weather scrapping outside, the bossy wind buffeting the mist into sullen swirls, the rain a repetitive grumble, interrupted by driving flurries of temper.

Next door Snape moaned in his sleep, muttering something incoherent. Harry tried to block out the sound - he didn’t want to intrude on the man’s dreams too. The restless muttering became louder and more insistent, coalescing into protests of alarm and a final, agonising cry:

“No! No more…! I will never… That’s enough! No! No!”

Harry leaped up in bed shaking as though it were he having the nightmare and not Snape.

“Oh no, not you too,” Harry sympathised. He knew only too well that sense of relentless, inescapable menace, that suffocating dread, the overwhelming intensity of fear; pain, acute, unimaginable pain, the screaming inevitability of death, the horror, the panic…

He knew the terror of waking alone, pulse racing, fighting for breath, clawing a jagged way up out of the black chasm towards rationality. And then lying there, trembling in the darkness, the sweat chilling on his skin, wringing the shock from every pore, every cell, yet still tense, poised for flight, terrified to close his eyes…

Yes, Harry had been there, done that. His nightmares were grotesque collages of green light, his parents’ screams, a graveyard, a cellar, whispering archways at the end of long, dark corridors; his own voice shouting “Crucio!”; red eyes glaring through the folds of a slowly unwinding turban… Those were Harry’s nightmares. After today he had a fair idea what Snape’s nightmares were too.

How many times had Harry lain awake, willing the horror to subside and wishing that there was someone - anyone - to take it all away. Someone calm and strong who could take control, take everything out of his hands; someone to say, ‘It’s alright, Harry. You’re alright.’; someone who would put an arm round him and hold him safely, and share the aching emptiness.

Harry slid out of bed and made his way to the door of Snape’s bedroom. He wanted, at least, to tell him that he understood; that he, Snape, was not alone… For a long time Harry hesitated outside the room, his hand reaching for the door-handle then withdrawing, unsure of his welcome. He listened, too timid to enter, moved by real compassion yet unable to act upon it. He had waited and then, wretched and ashamed, he had crept back to his own cold bed.

Harry had brewed the Potions, tidied the lab and even had time to have another wander round the herb garden before there was any sign of Snape. The rain in the night had scuttled the mist and it was one of those chilly, fresh, dazzling October mornings, the sky piercingly blue, the cool, Autumn sun shining for effect only. At the far corner of the garden, beneath a spreading Mulberry tree, Harry saw the granite shape of Braque, or it may just have been a rock, he didn’t go to investigate. It had suddenly seemed a good time to return to the house.

Snape eventually made an appearance. He was walking rather carefully, cushioning his movements, obviously nursing a dragon of a hangover, but determined not to admit it. He sat with his elbows on the kitchen table, leaning his head on his hands.

“Oh, Merlin!” he groaned.

Harry suppressed a tic of schadenfreude. He passed the Professor a mug of strong coffee and a tall glass of water.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be from now on…” Snape commented hoarsely, with a scowl, “…you monitoring my every move and disapproving, like that tutting Pomfrey woman.”

“She likes you, Sir,” Harry told him.

“Indeed?” Snape didn’t care.

“Yes. She said you were rude and patronising,” Harry quoted, hopelessly misjudging the tact to honesty ratio.

“Clearly an admirer!” said Snape, sardonically. Then he looked sharply at Harry,

“You have been discussing me with that medical harridan?”

“No, Sir, not really. Not at all.” Harry was desperate to change the subject, before they mired themselves in their first argument of the day. Striding to the window he announced, “I think I can see Braque.”

But the border at the base of the Mulberry tree was empty. There was, however, a small slag-heap, progressing purposefully towards the cottage.

Snape was shielding his eyes, wincing in the sunlight. He picked up the coffee mug,

“Look, I’m going to take this into the other room. It is excessively bright in here.”

Harry followed, smiling and shaking his head.

“I hardly expected you still to be here this morning,” Snape said quietly, addressing the coffee rather than meet Harry’s eye. “I am not obliged to justify myself to you, but…” He then proceeded to do so anyway. “… but I must emphasise that last night was atypical. Yesterday was…”

“It’s alright, Sir. You don’t need to explain.”

Snape now gave Harry a searching look, his dark eyes narrowed and pensive,

“No. I don’t suppose I do.”

He lapsed into silence. Harry wondered how much truth there was in Snape’s explanation, or whether he did actually drink more than he should. Who could blame him? It could be one reason why he was often so tetchy in class. Harry had assumed that Snape’s worst moods coincided with Death Eater meetings; or maybe the two were linked. Double-bluffing Voldemort would drive anyone to drink.

At that moment he caught sight of the empty Firewhisky bottle on the floor. With Snape in his current fragile condition it was difficult not to be judgemental. Correctly interpreting Harry’s sniff of reproof, Snape went on the defensive,

“Oh, don’t you start. I have already received one lecture from Quig this morning.”

There was a note of petulance in his voice that Harry had not heard before. He could not imagine how the shambling, bald, deaf elf could possibly reprimand the severe Potions master.

“Quig can be somewhat Puritanical in his views,” Snape complained. “He expresses them most… ..energetically. He is absurdly over-protective - takes family loyalty to unnecessary extremes.”

Harry suddenly experienced another of those flashes of insight that he sometimes felt when he was talking to Snape. It had happened only yesterday out on the hill, when he had intuitively guessed about the Veela. For years he had had the creepy notion that Snape could read his mind - and not only when using Legilimens - and he was beginning to wonder if it were a two-way thing.

“It was your mother, wasn’t it, who made Quig deaf?”

Snape put his mug down next to the empty bottle, his dark eyes fixed on Harry appraisingly.

“If I didn’t know better - if I didn’t know she was a talent-less, hysterical charlatan - I would think you had been receiving special tuition from Professor Trelawney,” he remarked, intrigued rather than outraged. “Your powers of deduction and lateral thinking are most perceptive. It is a pity you do not approach your written work with similar perspicacity.

“Or have you been conversing with Quig? No, that is hardly likely. He does not discuss his deafness.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. It’s none of my business.”

“Potter, Professor Dumbledore extracted a promise from me that I would answer your questions, and so far I have endeavoured to do so, however painful the truth. You have a right to ask; I reserve the right to refuse to answer.” Then, in a harsher, suspicious tone, he queried,

“Is that the real reason you stayed? To complete your fact-finding mission?”

Harry couldn’t deny it.

“Well, there are still some things I want to know…”

“I see.” The barriers of reserve went up again.

Oh, don’t be so bloody touchy, thought Harry. It’s like trying to talk to an angry porcupine. What am I supposed to say - that I want to stay here and get to know you? That I want to make sure you’re OK? Can’t you see that? That I want to work out if there is any point in contemplating a future in which we do something more constructive than snipe at each other? Give me a break!

“You were going to tell me about Quig, Sir?”

“Indeed. Quig has been the Snape family house elf for many years. He was especially devoted to my mother. In the early days of her… ..illness, before I discovered the Potion that stabilised her condition, she still had the use of her magical powers. On one occasion she turned them on herself. Quig intervened and his deafness is the resultant injury. In employing him I am merely honouring the ‘blood bond’. That is all.”

If Harry had been hoping for more detailed family history, he wasn’t going to get it. Snape was still smarting from Harry’s completely unintentional rebuff; beneath the tough skin of anger and impatience he bruised easily. Harry was only just beginning to understand that. He studied Snape, thinking how much it had cost him to admit that his mother had been suicidal; how any reply, however curt, was really quite a breakthrough, a gesture of confidence. Though, compared to the revelations of the day before, this was small beer.

The three phials of Potion were still in Harry’s pocket. For the nth time, he contemplated telling Snape that he had been in the laboratory that morning, and once again he decided to put it off until a little later. Snape could wait. No point in getting bogged down in a debate about the infringement of house rules. Before he aggravated Snape again there was one last, important question that Harry needed to ask.

For a quarry-on-legs Braque could move with remarkable stealth. He insinuated himself into the room and had solidified at Snape’s feet before Harry had realised he was inside the building. Snape allowed his arm to hang down and the purple tongue snaked out, darting over his hand, licking around and in between his fingers.

“Never stroke him directly on the top of his head,” he instructed, “It obstructs his third eye.” As if Harry were going to pet him!

“Why do you call him Braque, Sir. Is it a French name?”

Snape gave him a withering glance,

“What do they teach you in Muggle Studies, these days? Potter, do you know nothing about the origins of 20th Century Cubism? Picasso, Leger, Gris, Braque…?” he reeled off a list of names, meaningless to Harry. “ ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’? Never heard of it? ‘Au secours! Je suis un poisson!’..?, ‘Nature morte sur une chaise’…? No? Drawn a blank, have we? You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you, Potter?” He sighed, “I suppose it’s not your fault. The syllabus is grossly slanted in favour of electrical, labour-saving gadgets. Well then, listen and learn, Potter.

“Georges Braque along with Pablo Picasso was one of the founders of the Cubist Movement in Muggle painting in France at the turn of the last century. I am making the rash assumption that you are, at least, familiar with the term ‘Cubism’? Yes? Very well. Conceptually, Cubism was the reduction of objects to their simplest components such as the basic geometric shapes - cones, cubes, cylinders - and the use of these to portray the subject from all angles simultaneously, thus producing a multi-dimensional image… Vous comprenez? Do you understand, Potter?”

“Um, not really, Sir.” Harry was way out of his depth.

“Fine. Let’s try again. Look at the wall - over there, above the fireplace.”

Snape drew a series of weaving lines in the air with his wand and, concentrating hard, murmured,

“Picturam monstro!”

The smooth, white plaster began to smudge and darken; lines and shadows appeared, sharp edges and angles, spliced with curves, in shades of grey and brown and black, a jumble of unrecognisable, disconnected forms.

“It is called ‘Violon et palette’. From Braque’s early ‘grey’ period. Observe closely, Potter. What do you see?”

Snape was willing him to succeed. He had come round from their earlier altercation. Harry could sense his eagerness to impart even a fraction of his enthusiasm for the painting, thinly disguised beneath the educational veneer.

“It’s a violin, sort of. But it’s all in broken bits.” Harry hazarded, personally thinking the picture a right mess.

“Look again. Let your mind accept the violin in its entirety, from all angles: see the sound holes, the strings, the swelling curve of the rim, the scroll, the palette… Do you see these things, Potter? Allow the images to expand into your consciousness; do not confine your senses with dimensional constraints. You do it in Occlumency - apply the same skills to what you are seeing now…”

Harry tried very hard. For a while he saw only the mix of grey-brown triangles, then a whole violin emerged out of the rubble and rotated before his eyes, as substantial as a Patronus.

“Hey! That’s amazing!”

Snape seemed pleased. He leaned back in the chair, and the picture faded from sight.

“To answer your original question, I named the Tuatara ‘Braque’ after the artist, as you will have gathered. The creature was lying in front of the fire and… …you have noticed the spinal ridges and plates which extend the length of his tail?”

Harry couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t.

“In his very angularity and colouration - that greyish, earthy tone - he reminded me of that painting. A whimsical notion, I fear.”

“No, Sir, it suits him. It’s just that… can I ask you a question, Sir?” Harry knew he was juggling with jinxes, but he had to keep delving, trying to understand this other Snape.

“You may.” Captious as ever.

“It’s just that I always thought you disapproved of Muggle Studies, Sir? I mean, you always seemed so…”

“So what?” Snape raised an eyebrow.

Intolerant. Dismissive. Scathing. Negative. Downright prejudiced.

“Oh, nothing. I had the impression you hated everything about Muggles, that’s all.”

“Broadly speaking, that is correct. But there are exceptions. Just because I abhor certain Muggle materialistic proclivities, does not mean that I cannot admire other aspects of their culture - artistic creativity, for example.”

“You make a good job of not showing it!”

“What would you have me do, Potter? Offer lessons in Art Appreciation? Some things are private, and should remain so. And besides, in the circles in which I have - until lately - been operating, it is politic to wave the party wand.”

“But, Sir, all this French stuff is part of your heritage; it’s part of who you are. You can’t just pretend that it doesn’t exist. The language, the paintings - they’re important to you, aren’t they? Your mother…”

“That is all in the past. And my mother is dead, Potter.” Snape reminded him sharply.

“But what about the poetry…?”

“Poetry?” Snape fell on the word like a hawk.

“I found a book, Sir,” Harry confessed, shame-faced.

“Dragon’s blood! Is nothing sacred? What did you do, ransack the entire house the minute my back was turned? Have you had a good snoop in my bedroom? When you fail to qualify as an Auror, you can fall back on your evident vocation as a sleuth.”

Harry was not going to let himself be brow-beaten.

“It was my mother’s book! Why have you got my mother’s book?” he raised his voice and confronted his father. Dropping the sarcasm, Snape answered simply,

“Because she gave it to me.”

That was not the reply Harry had anticipated. If he were to believe everything Snape had told him so far, - and, surprisingly, he did - Lily and Snape had never been particularly friendly. So why had she given him her book?

“Why? When?” Harry spluttered. “You said you never had a relationship with her. You said you didn’t fancy her. You don’t mean she was chasing after you? Oh, Merlin! This is sick! It was all a pack of lies, wasn’t it? You’ve been lying to me like all the rest?”

“Compose yourself, Potter!” Snape barked. “I am not going to speak to you while you persist in making these incoherent, unfounded erroneous allegations. Let us get one thing straight: I am not lying to you now; I have never lied to you, and I do not intend to. Is that clear?”

Harry gave a truculent nod.

“Very well. Next, if you are so insistent on absolute accuracy, I should say that I do not recall at any time telling you that I did not ‘fancy’ - as you so crudely put it - Lily Evans. That does not mean, however, that we were in any way romantically entangled.”

“Yeah, right.” Harry remained sullenly unconvinced.

From his sitting position, Snape looked up at the boy who stood so defiantly in front of him, hands in pockets, every atom of his body crying out disillusion and betrayal, and his voice softened,

“Harry, your mother was an extremely attractive woman: she was beautiful and intelligent and cultured and witty and kind… Everybody admired her. At school we all did. A man would have been blind or mad or unnatural not to. But she was involved with James Potter and, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.”

“So why’s she giving you presents then? A poetry book, for God’s sake! Tell me that!”

“Yesterday morning I went to Snape Manor.”

It seemed to be a non-sequitur, but Harry understood Snape well enough by now to know that the eventual point would be relevant. He remembered how distracted he had been on his return.

“I was looking for a note that I received from Lily shortly before…”

“Notes too! What a surprise!”

“Potter - sit down and stop interrupting! Either you shut up and listen, or you may leave. Perhaps - ” Snape slumped back in his chair, suddenly drained, “…perhaps it would be better if you did leave. We have done nothing but argue from the moment you arrived. We’d both be better off if you went back to Hogwarts. Look, Potter… I’m tired, I have a headache and my throat is raw from this damned cough - I can do without getting embroiled in a fresh slanging-match with you every five minutes. You know where the Floo powder is - use it.”

Harry stubbornly stood his ground.

“Oh no, you’re not fobbing me off that easily! I want to hear the note.”

With a sigh, Snape unfolded a sheet of pearly blue parchment on which Harry could see a few short lines quilled in an elegant, flowing script. Snape cleared his throat painfully and began to read in a strained voice:

Dear Severus,

I am writing to implore you to abandon this senseless, futile feud with my husband. I am begging him to do the same. It has gone too far. Sooner or later one of you will end up killing the other.

I have a child now - as you may have heard - and I want him to grow up knowing his father, not visiting his grave.

I am sending you a book in which I have marked certain passages. Read them, Severus, and let the words enter your heart.

Yours,

Lily Potter

Snape stopped reading and folded the note with deliberate precision and a finality that Harry found infuriating.

“She knew you were my father - why didn’t she say so? Did she want you to know or didn’t she? Didn’t this note give you a clue? Didn’t it make you wonder? Didn’t you think it was a bit weird getting a note like that from someone you’d… ? And what about the book?”

“Of course I thought it was odd!” Snape snapped.

Harry should have realised that the methodical neatness and air of detachment was a defence mechanism.

“There had been rumours that after the Death Eater attack Lily had suffered some kind of a breakdown - that she was depressed. I thought the letter was a product of her unhappiness. That she hoped that if I behaved leniently towards James, it would somehow save their marriage. Potter, if she had wanted me to know, she would have told me!”

“And the poems?” Harry persisted.

But Snape was coughing and could not speak. Harry waited and then repeated his question:

“The poems? Didn’t they make you think?” He quoted the first line from Rimbaud which seemed to have lodged in his mind,

“‘Qu’est-ce pour nous, mon coeur, que les nappes de sang…’”

“You read them?” Snape asked, distinctly uncomfortable.

Harry nodded.

“All of them?”

“The ones that were marked with the ‘Favourites’ Charm, yes.”

“Oh, Merlin!” Snape was mortified. “Yes, they made me think. They spoke to me in a way that other arguments did not; they made me reconsider. That was one of Lily’s qualities - she knew how to ‘reach’ people. I did begin to wonder about things - about the child, about her feelings. There were times when I was close to death…” Dark memory beckoned his thoughts inwards, into shadow; his voice, low and very quiet, faltered, “I knew it… I felt it…”

The black eyes suddenly flashed in alarm, as though Snape had found himself slipping off the edge of a cliff, and he grabbed at a handhold in the conversation,

“And in view of the poems she had high-lighted…”

“She chose them? I thought you had…” Harry exclaimed, another illusion shattered.

“No. Her choice. But, apart from the Rimbaud, whether they were of special significance to her own life or whether she chose them with me in mind, I do not know. I will never know.”

“Didn’t you want to find out? You could have asked her.” Harry probed the open wound.

“They were both killed soon afterwards. I did not see her again.”

“But, ‘Si tu savais’ - who was …?”

“Potter, I don’t know! What does it matter any more? She is gone. Do you think I haven’t read those poems a thousand times, trying to figure out her reasons for sending them? Don’t you think I lie awake at night wondering what might have happened if things had been different?

“I don’t know if James’ letter to you implied that Lily was party to his quest for vengeance. I hardly think it likely, especially in the light of that note. I choose to believe that the poems were her way of saying that she was prepared to forgive me… her way of making me think about what my life had become… her way of encouraging me to forgive myself…”

His voice had dropped, weighted down with regret and self-recrimination.

“Merde! I need a drink!” he muttered. Then, as Harry headed towards the tallboy, “No. Water. Just water.”

Harry decided that it was time to leave. Snape was obviously sick of the sight of him and, as far as Harry’s questions about Lily went, they appeared to have reached a dead end. There was still more he wanted to ask about James and Lily, but he’d have to wait until Snape had calmed down before he stood a chance of getting an answer. As for the ‘reconciliation’, they’d given it their best shot, but they were getting nowhere. It was disappointing, but they would have to accept that they were never going to ‘connect’. Snape had fulfilled his promise to Dumbledore and imparted information, more perhaps than was strictly necessary. He had behaved honourably, but that was not, ultimately, what Harry wanted. Honour alone would not persuade Harry to stay.

Harry wanted Snape to care. He wanted some indication, however nebulous, that he meant more to Snape than a family obligation. That might induce him to stay; that would give him hope. But, as it was…

He wouldn’t be needing his Emergency Antidote after all, thank you very much. He pulled the other two phials out of his pocket and approached Snape.

“I’ll go now, Sir. Here - you might as well have these. I brewed them for you this morning. There’s ‘Nontussium’ for your cough, and ‘Dreamless Sleep #3’ for your…” He felt guilty; it was like admitting to Snape that he had been eavesdropping, spying on him in his sleep, “…for the nightmares.”

He challenged the Potions master to berate him.

“OK, so I went in your lab. What of it? It’s alright, you don’t have to say anything, I’m leaving anyway.”

Snape was staring blindly at the little bottles in his hand.

“You brewed these, for me?” He seemed disproportionately touched.

So what? They’re just potions. No big deal. Oh, for Merlin’s sake!

“They should make you feel better, sir. All the ingredients were freshly picked this morning, and I followed the recipes really carefully…” Harry rambled on, trying to cover his embarrassment at the fact that his gesture had left Snape momentarily overwhelmed.

“You didn’t make all this fuss about the blood!” Harry then declared, feeling that, on the scale of noble deeds, donating his blood had been a far, far better thing…

“What blood?”

“When you were in the hospital wing, you had to have a transfusion, and I gave…” he broke off, alarmed by the stricken expression on Snape’s face.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know… Harry...” Snape whispered his name brokenly. His left hand moved up to shield his eyes, though the room was in shadow; his other clenched into a fist. Behind the hand, his eyes were tightly closed. He turned his head away.

Harry didn’t know what to do. Acting on instinct, he moved closer to Snape and awkwardly put a hand on his shoulder. He could feel him trembling with the effort of maintaining his self-control. Snape tensed at his touch then, gradually, relaxed. A minute, maybe more, went by in silence. Then the fist unclenched and, reaching up to where Harry’s fingers still rested lightly on his shoulder, Snape clasped Harry’s hand.

Another extended minute passed until Snape drew a long, shuddering sigh, exhaled deeply and gave a perfunctory cough. Harry withdrew his hand.

“You take the Nontussium, Sir. I’m going to make some tea,” he said, escaping, tactful for once in his life.

Tea - the dependable English fail-safe in times of emotional crisis.

When Harry returned bearing mugs, Snape gave him a wan smile,

“Thank you,” he murmured, indicating the empty phial.

Harry stepped cautiously past Braque, who had curled himself monolithically around his master’s legs, and sat down.

“I thought you were leaving,” Snape said, coolly. He had mentally assigned the last ten minutes a priority place in the Pensieve, along with most of the events of the previous two days.

“Yes, I am. That is, I am if you want me to,” Harry countered, quietly exultant, confident now that Snape would like him to stick around. Determined to press his advantage, he had parried Snape’s dismissive move and expected him to come back with another thrust, but this time Snape did not retaliate. He met Harry’s gaze squarely:

“This constant fencing has got to stop,” he said. “If we are to acknowledge your true identity - and even that point is still open to debate - it is imperative that we establish a modus vivendi. This verbal sparring is counter-productive. If the two of us alone cannot adjust to our relationship, how do you expect to cope once the scandal - and, believe me, this will not be viewed in a favourable light - becomes public knowledge? The school will be a ferment of gossip. The media vultures at the Daily Prophet will be merciless. Our private lives will come under scrutiny - you may be accustomed to that, Potter, you may even thrive on it, but I do not. For the sake of appearances, at least, we must learn to present a united front.

“What happens when you return to Hogwarts will be your decision. If you insist on transferring to another school, then so be it. We can discuss that later, though you appear to have already made your choice. As for myself, however, I will say this, and I’ll only say it once…”

He paused and then, speaking quietly and sincerely, he stated:

“I do not wish you to leave. Whether you like it or not, Harry, you are my son and you are welcome in my home.”

“That makes four,” Harry mumbled to himself.

“Four what?” Snape had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh, nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Harry bridled. He hadn’t meant Snape to overhear. He was not going to be caught out indulging in sentimentality. Only a Truth Charm would get him to admit that every time Snape used his Christian name it registered in his brain like the clang of a cash-till, ringing up a running total of his father’s affection. Once in the cellar, and three times today - by Snape’s standards that was positively effusive.

Harry hadn’t been consciously counting - pathetic really! - but any glimmer of genuine affection through the drab of Snape’s emotional blackout was precious. He knew better than to expect Snape to be demonstrative. He wasn’t going to have a complete change of character overnight. He was still an uptight, unpredictable bastard, still dangerous - old habits die hard. But that was only one side of Severus Snape.

“Why can’t you just use my name, like everyone else?” Harry exclaimed in an aggrieved tone. The underlying note of hurt made Snape look at him sharply.

“It will be difficult to break the habit of six years, but I will try to remember, if it is important to you,” he offered.

They were standing by the window, watching Braque gliding through the long grass like a grey, oiled, rocky reef.

“He’s so strange, the way he moves - he doesn’t seem to be moving at all, and then he’s gone,” Harry commented, retreating to the impersonal safety of small talk.

“Tuatara have an exceptionally slow metabolic rate,” responded Snape in relief, seizing the chance to follow Harry out of the danger zone. “That is one of the reasons they live so long. It also affects their musculature - all their movements are superbly coordinated, slow and fluid, apart, of course, from the tongue!”

Harry glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw that Snape was almost smiling. He was intensely aware of his proximity. Wonder what he’d do if I leaned back against him? Probably jump like a scalded Crup, thought Harry, inwardly grinning. He had no idea how he would handle things once they were both back at school but here, for now, it felt safe to indulge in the fantasy that there might be some flimsy bond between them. It felt odd to be standing so close to him without getting that flutter of mingled fear and hatred in his stomach. Not detesting Professor Snape was going to take some getting used to.

Snape was certainly no ideal parent; not an exemplary role model. Paradoxically, it was his failings and how he dealt with them that had earned from Harry a new respect - the man was human after all. He could still be scary too, sometimes, but Harry was no longer frightened of him.

It was far too soon to say whether he would ever actually come to love his father; half the time Harry didn’t even think he liked him very much; he was sure he’d never fully understand him. Yet, in a strange, indefinable way, Harry knew now that he needed him. It occurred to Harry that Professor Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey had been right after all.

As if to echo his thoughts, Snape said,

“This is not going to be easy, - for either of us.”

Too right! Apart from the fact that everybody would now be expecting him to excel at Potions, Harry had a nasty suspicion that Snape might require him secretly to learn French or take up some arty Muggle hobby like playing the violoncello. Zut alors!

“No,” replied Harry, “Having you for a father has been absolute hell so far, and I don’t expect it to get much better!”

“Indeed? Then we agree on something,” said Snape dryly. “Now, Potter, we need to address the vexed question of ‘house rules’…”